Lands of Katagma

We turned our attention back towards getting to the top of the tree, to gain a sample of the fungus required for the antidote. Given the strength that would be required to reach the top, Baldwin stepped up to try and, while not being able to see how he was actually doing, I played a motivational song in an attempt to boost his abilities. It seemed to have worked however as the rustling of branches made fast progress up the tree, stopping about 10 feet up.

Unfortunately, Amabilis’s soft voice then crept out from the top of the tree. “You know, it’s just a fungus. If you throw it all off the side of the tree, you’ll solve the problem”. I didn’t think Baldwin was this stupid, but Melech’s voice indicated other results. “What the hell are you doing? We need that!” He yelled. “Baldwin’s chucked the mushroom off the tree and now it’s surrounded by a bunch of little blights down there,” I heard him say to me. “Beiro and I need to get down there now. Stay here!” “But I can help get down …” I started to object, but the receding footfalls made it clear he’d already left.

About ten seconds later I heard Baldwin’s voice next to me. “Where did Melech and Beiro go?” He asked. “They’re headed to the base of the tree, but we need to move fast to get the mushroom.” I responded hurriedly, then after a pause “trust me” and I grabbed Baldwin and threw us both out of the tree. As we fell, I sang out my high B flat note again, slowing both of our falls.

“There’s a lot of them” Baldwin yelled, as I heard him loose an arrow in midair. I could hear the chittering getting louder and it seemed to be coming from all directions. Having a good frame of reference for the sounds, I met the ground cleanly and drew my rapier. Turning toward the nearest source of sound. I stabbed towards it but didn’t connect with anything, instead of taking a hail of thorns to my leg. I then realised in the darkness how perilous a decision this might’ve been and realised Baldwin was no longer beside me. Hearing Melech yelling from behind, I ran towards him, but not without taking another barrage of thorns from my invisible assailants.

I half-tripped over a root of the tree and had a thought. If I can get back to the entrance of the tree, I might be able to get away. I scrambled to the base of the tree and started following the trunk around. I quickly hit an inlet, the entrance! But no sooner had I hauled myself inside I tripped over something on the floor. Feeling about, it was a body. Calling out into nothingness, I shouted: “Is this one of ours?”. “It’s Melech!” came Baldwin’s voice suddenly as he rushed past me and up the stairs. “What’s up?” came another voice, Beiro, this time stopping before the heap of bodies on the floor I was contributing to. “Melech’s got a health potion in his satchel, can you get it for me?” I said frantically. I heard a rustling and then “Here!” as a vial was thrust into my hands. Knowing better than trying to explain why it might not be as easy for me to do this, I felt around until I found Melech’s face and tipped the health potion in. Luckily the blights did not seem to be interested in following Beiro into the tree.

With Melech back on his feet, the three of us proceeded up the stairway after Baldwin. We can’t have been much more than halfway up though when we heard a womanly scream falling down the side of the tree, followed by a soft crunch. The sound of laughter started to drift down, Baldwin’s it seemed, followed by a much heavier crunch near the base of the tree. A wave of relief suddenly spread over me, but, it didn’t seem to be my own. Instead, a sort of spirit washed over with a message of thanks. Thanks for freeing her from the curse. It was Amabilis and the deed was done.

With the treehouse now seemingly safe from any further assault, we took the opportunity to rest up and heal our wounds. To my relief, my sight came back after the rest and I started to feel healthy again. I stretched my legs out along the walkways and could now see down below the corpse of Amabilis with the other iron boot wedging her head firmly into the ground. It was clear that Baldwin had been able to push her out of the tree and followed up while she was on the ground.

We took a look at the other buildings that made up the treehouse complex that we hadn’t had the chance to look through before and happened across what appeared to be the bedroom. Rummaging through some of the drawers, I found a stash of coin, but there was a disgusted groan from behind as Baldwin made a significantly more gruesome discovery. Stitched to the underside of the rug he’d just looked under, there was the decomposing corpse of a gnome, quite possibly the druid who’d been making the notes that we’d found. There was a flash from above and through a large hole in the roof, an owl suddenly flew in and took a swipe at Baldwin, narrowly missing, and flew back up. It perched on the root, preparing to swoop in again, it’s eyes locked on Baldwin, but as Baldwin slowly put the rug back down, it relaxed.

It was at that point Beiro started hooting. The owl cocked it’s head all the way to one side and hooted back. The rest of us exchanged awkward glances, but after a while, it did actually seem like there were having a conversation. “We should bury him,” Beiro said abruptly. “The owl was his friend and would like to see that he’s put to rest”

We discuss what to do next and decide I should climb the tree to look for a fungus that Melech said we needed to complete a some kind of cure for the tree. I climb the tree with no issues attaching a safety rope as I went. However as I approached the top I saw the Dryad. I attempted to use the crown to charm her but it seemed to have no effect. I finished climbing to the top and as I approached the dryad vanished into the tree again. I saw the fungus and was overcome with an urge to throw it off the tree.

After chunking it off I suddenly wondering why I had and Melech didn’t seem best pleased about it. I climb back down as Beiro and Melech made there way down the stairs. I reached Amafey and she grabbed me and moved to jump out of the tree. Hoping that she was thinking what I was thinking I let it happen. As I expected she slowed our fall using feather fall. On the way down I could see a vast amount of blights swarming around the tree. Not wanting to miss an opportunity I took out my bow a shot a blight before landing and taking out a few more with my sword.

I looked behind to see a large patch of fog over where I expected the fungus we needed to be. I moved towards the fog and entered it with intent to locate the fungus. The fog suddenly cleared revealing Beiro and Melech on the other side. Melech moved and picked up the fungus completing the potion before applying it to the tree.

I heard a shout from Amafey. I had forgotten about her and she was now surrounded by blights! I moved into attack them. We retreated back to the entrance of the tree taking a few hits from the blights on the way. Out the corner of my eye I see the dryad attack Beiro with a few magical darts as he fends off some blights.

I cut down a few blights blocking the entrance and enter the tree again. It seems Melech had been knocked unconscious. I decided the best course of action was to kill the dryad as quickly as possible and let Amafey help Melech.

I run up the stairs feeling a new surge of energy. I see the dryad ahead on the walk way. I charge her grabbing her. She struggles but I am stronger! I lift her and up and throw her out the tree. With a sickening crack she hits the ground. She looks to still be alive though, so following example I throw the other iron boot at her. It strikes her in the head as she tries to rise, shattering her skull! Definitely dead now.

A feeling or relief and thanks washes over me. Melech had been revived so we group back together before searching the other rooms. We find what looks like a body covered by a rug. As I lift the rug a huge owl swoops in and attacks me! I drop the rug and move back.

It turns out Beiro can talk to animals and it turns out the dead thing under the rug was its master. Through Beiro we come to an agreement to bury its master along with the dryad.

We retreated from the maze and a camped nearby for the night. Nothing eventful happened and the next day we entered the maze again. We followed the string we had previously used to mark our route, stopping just before the centre.

Beiro moved ahead into the clearing shouting out to the Dryad. She responded, promising this time we would die. No, I thought, it is you who is going to die. As the rest of us moved into the clearing the walls closed behind us. Well I guess we don’t have much choice but to kill her now.

Me and Beiro did a quick game of rock-paper-scissors to determine who would go first. I won so naturally I went first moving quickly up the stairs. I wanted to avoid fighting on them again.

I cam to a landing, shortly followed by the others. There was a walkway around the tree leading to a number of tree houses. I went across the walkway directly off the stairs and to the door of the nearest tree house. It was locked but didn’t look that sturdy. Thinking about it the walkway wasn’t in that good of a condition either. I kicked the door in and entered with my sword drawn.

In the room were strewn a load of papers and various bits of equipment. I began to have a quick search around before hearing a commotion outside. I quickly made my way back towards the door spotting the dryad on the walkway. Beiro was acting even more weirdly than usual and not fighting the dryad. I used my bow to fire off a couple of arrows at the dryad who seemed to be having difficulty fighting back. Melech was also attacking her with spells. I wasn’t sure what Amafey was up to.

All at once the dryad vanished again and I heard a massive crash from the other side of the tree. Beiro was uselessly blocking the way ahead so I made may way back past Melech around to the other side of the tree. There was now a load of spores in the air making it harder to breath and see.

It turned out Amafey had caused part of the walkway to collapse while trying to outflank the Dryad. She looked like she was trying to make her way up the collapsed walk way but was having trouble.

As it turned out the spores had had an averse affect on her and she couldn’t see any more. I helped her back around the walk way to the first tree house. There were less spores in there. Melech was in there rummaging through the papers and began informing us they might be useful.

Suddenly there was another bang and I leapt out the door to see some orcs coming out one of the other tree houses on to the walkway. Between us, excluding Amafey who was now useless, we made short work of the orcs. Melech even blasted a few of them out the tree with a wind spell.

I entered the room they had come from and began to search around. It was a kitchen area and off it was another room. In that room I found some writing on the wall in what looked like blood. I called out to the other and Melech soon arrived. Beiro soon arrived helping Amafey along.

As Amafey couldn’t see and none of the rest of us could read it Beiro and I decided to trace it for Amafey. It turned out it was Sylvan and she translated it for us. It was just seemed like a number of different proverbs and didn’t really mean much to me.

Mercifully, we were able to make a rapid exit from the labyrinth, following the thread we had laid down and with no other intrusions. We made camp a small way away and, although we were all very much on edge, the night passed without incident. In the morning, we all cautiously made our way back into the maze, again making much faster progress as we now knew the best route to follow.

As we came back towards the centre of the maze, I hung back at the final turn, peering around to see what we might face, but Beiro strode confidently out into the clearing. “Hello! We’re back!” he called out. “Interlopers!” a voice curled out from the top of the large tree in the clearing, “I had mercy before and let you leave with your lives, but you have squandered your chance and you will not be so lucky this time.” As Amabilis spoke, the briar walls behind us closed in, sealing our way out. The rest of us jumped forwards into the clearing. “Well, the only way is up, who’s going first?” I asked. Baldwin and Beiro played a quick game of boulder, parchment, shears, which Baldwin won, so he decided he was going first (I always thought it was the loser that would go first, but ok).

While we were trying to work out what order the rest of us were in and any other plans if we meet anything on the way up or at the top, a crunching sound started behind us. Turning, we could see two viney, briary creatures forming out of the walls that had closed up behind us. “Just GO!” I yelled, and without any further moment’s hesitation from anyone, we charged into the tree and up the carved staircase. We made such haste that had anything tried to come out of the wall this time, we would’ve already passed it by the time it could form and we soon found ourselves at the top of the staircase.

Laid out before us was a series of walkways hanging in the taller branches of the tree in a circle around the trunk and a single path out from the trunk’s staircase. Additionally, there were a series of treehouses, nestled amongst the leaves, making for a rather fine complex. However, parts of it were showing sign of either wear or rot and it wasn’t clear how much abuse the walkways would take before giving way. Fearless, Baldwin strode out towards the treehouse immediately in front of us and kicked the door down. Beiro was a bit more cautious. Concerned about his weight on the walkways, rummaged in his bag to take out the heavy iron boot he was still carrying around. He went to put it to one side, but then looking over the edge we could see the briar creatures hanging around at the bottom of the trunk. He dropped the boot off the side and after a brief moment, a sickening crunch indicated he’d scored a direct hit, smushing one of the creatures into the soft earth at the base of the tree.

The rest of us then cautiously made our way onto the gantry, fanning out and wary of any attack from Amabilis. Walking to the left around the walkways, I reached the next hour, cracked the door open. Peering in, I saw what appeared to be a kitchen, but also a handful of orcs, dead and wrapped in a multitude of vines, much like the ones we’d seen in the walls of the maze. What were they doing up here?! I carefully closed the door again at which point I started hearing voices through the trees, Amabilis had appeared! I started sprinting along the walkway in the opposite direction I’d come in an attempt to get a sneak attack from behind, but my haste shook the walkway free from its holdings in the tree. With a creak, the section I was on started to fall. In a combination of my childhood paranoia and quick reflexes, I sang out a high B flat and slowed my fall, coming to rest gently on the dislodged walkway about 15 to 20 feet down.

Unfortunately, while my own descent had been gentle, the sudden crashing of the walkway dislodged a whole host of spores from the tree, which quickly found their way into my eyes and throat. I was blinded and suddenly not feeling very well in general! On my hands and knees, I felt my way along the walkway, back towards the way I had come. It seemed to be still connected, although there was now a steep slope back up to where I had left the kitchen-ike building. The sounds of fighting on the other side of the tree had also stopped. “Amafey, what’s wrong with you?” I heard Baldwin’s voice say from just above me. “Those spores, I…I can’t see” I responded, coughing. “Hmm” Baldwin sighed and escorted me back to what I presume was the house he first went in. It sounded like everyone was present and Melech was quite excited by something.

“So, looking through these notes, it looks like someone was here trying to help the tree, a druid or something that thinks plants are better than humanoids and other creatures. They’ve concocted a potion or fertilizer or something that should cure the tree of the disease ailing it. The main ingredients it’s missing should be some fungus that’s growing somewhere at the crown of the tree” Melech explained. “The downside is that they say an kind old lady was helping them, which we would all probably suspect is you-know-who…”. “Worth a shot,” I say, “maybe they made a deal for the proper fix, but something went south”.

At that point, however, there was a crashing from outside, as though one of the doors of the other houses had been thrown open. “Orcs!” Baldwin yelled and the others all hurried out of the door. Blind and unable to help directly, I started trying to inspire the others in battle. “I may be blind, but I hope you find, the power inside, to kick these orcs’ hide!” I could do nothing more though than just listen to the battle raging outside. After about ten to fifteen seconds, it sounded like it was going well, so I ventured outside, bow and arrow drawn on the off-chance any obvious sounds to shoot made themselves known. Nothing was clear enough though, at least not without a strong chance of hitting a teammate, and the sounds of battle died down soon after.

“We need to get to the top of the tree” I suggested, “Anyone fancy trying to climb up? If you scream loud enough I should be able to catch you if you fall off.” “I’ll take a look” offered Melech, I think keen to try and find the closing results of the research notes. A few seconds passed, then I heard his voice in front of me again “No luck, I can’t see any way up”. “There’s some writing in here!” I heard Baldwin call out, from roughly the direction of the kitchen I found. “I can’t read it though, I’m not sure what language it’s in.” “I’ll come to look” Melech called over, “Beiro, stay here with Amafey,” he said to one side and marched off past me.

Above five minutes passed with no further disturbance. “It doesn’t sound like they’ve had any luck with the writing in there,” I said to Beiro, “can you take me over there?” and Beiro led me around the walkways into the other treehouse. “Guide my hand along the letters, I might be able to work it out” I suggested and felt my hand being taken and held to the wall, traced against a slightly sticky surface.”What was this written in?” I asked. “Blood,” said Baldwin gruffly. Ah, it would have been nice if I hadn’t had to touch this one, but needs must. As my hand passed over the letters, it started to come together. The letters were elven, yes, but the language was Sylvan and I was able to translate it. “It’s sylvan. I think I’ve got it” There was a huff from the corner of the room. “Well, I was preparing a spell to read it, but whatever” I heard Melech say grumpily. “Oh, sorry,” I said sheepishly, “I didn’t realise that’s what you were doing in here” Melech sighed “nevermind, I can save the spell for something else now. So what does it say?” “This first one is ‘Growing plants need blood’ and I think this over one says ‘A broken branch is a broken bone’”. Were these meant for us? More threats seemed unnecessary at this point…

As we walked, we discussed whether we should rest again. Even given the rest that we had had after fighting the blights, Beiro and Baldwin looked quite beaten up and Melech claimed he was running out of spells. With the wound Beiro had given me, I was inclined to agree, but I also wanted to continue and not leave ourselves open to attack. Finally, we agreed to keep going, but would almost certainly need another break, if not to pause for the night, if we found any more resistance.

A short while later, we heard Baldwin call from behind us “Wait, I hear something. Rustling or chittering or something”. We all stopped to see whether we could hear it “I heard it too” Beiro said, “but it seems to have stopped”. I obviously missed it. “Let’s keep going, but carefully,” Baldwin said, ushering is forward once again. We took a few more steps and there was a flash of movement ahead of us. I happened to be looking in just the right spot and caught a clear view of the creature. A small spindly body covered entirely in the same thorns as in the walls. I also recognised it, as these creatures were the subject of many an elven folk tale. This was a child of the briar and given where we were, there were likely a lot more nearby. There were many tales that warned caution whenever you could hear the clicking sound that is their language, as they are evil in nature and enjoy the taste of blood. However, they carried their own interests and would trade for trinkets, favours or blood willingly given.

I relayed this information quietly to the rest of the group and decided it perhaps best to start a discussion of trade to avoid the threat of an attack. Given Baldwin had the crown he called out to the woods in Sylvan “Children of Briar, we would like to trade”. No response. I stepped forwards, thinking a better idea of what we were dealing with would help, but it would only serve to break my confidence “Children of briar, we have….err… trinkets with which we would like to find out what…err…you have to offer?”. Unsurprisingly, our hidden friends remained equally unmoved by this. I decided to cut to the chase. Rummaging around in my backpack, I pulled out the copper chalice that we had found in the same hall we had found the crown in. “We have this trinket to offer for a trade”. A thorny head poked out of one of the nearby walls “Trade?” It said, also in Sylvan. “Yes,” I responded, “we have no quarrel with you and wondered whether maybe we could offer each other something”. The small creature cocked its head to one side, then pointed at the chalice “I’ll show you to the centre of the maze in exchange for that cup”.

This seemed like a good start, changing what could have been an encounter that wore us out into our ticket to our destination. “Would we be safe if we were with you?” I queried, keen to get some clarification on this potential deal. “That would be down to Amabilis,” they said, matter-of-factly. We’d learned this was the dryad’s name from the pixie earlier and it was a fair point because it seemed like she had a high degree of control over this maze. What it did tell us was we would likely be safe from any of his companions in the maze. Keen to take advantage of conversing with an inside figure, I started querying about any information they might have. “If we had more to trade, could you tell us anything about Amabilis, the hag or the orcs that we’ve seen about the maze?” They thought for a second, “We could tell you about the orcs, what else would you have to exchange?” Thinking about our options, we had the ivory comb as another trinket, but it was probably worth a lot more than the information about the orcs. We’d had enough of favours after the hag incident, so that left us with blood. I wasn’t aware of any ill effect on us or the briar child of giving this, just that they liked it, so it was probably our best bet. “What about blood?” I asked. The child of briar’s eyes lit up at this suggestion. “Yes, that would be good” it chirped.

With our possibilities settled, I requested to discuss them with my companions. Our conversation had been taking place in Sylvan, so, although Baldwin knew what was going on, Melech and Beiro were less up to speed. We discussed and discounted the comb for extra information (although Melech was keen if there were no other options) and Beiro bravely volunteered himself to give blood, particularly as it was in exchange for information about the orcs. Beiro hated orcs. We were just reaching the details of offering the blood first and giving the chalice when we arrived safely when the child of briar interrupted. “Cup first”, in common, having clearly been eavesdropping. I looked at them. They didn’t seem to be about to double cross us, they just didn’t want to lose out themselves. If there was anything you could trust fey on, it was keeping up their side of a bargain. “Ok, fine,” I said, “but blood later”. “Hmmm” it pondered “ okay!” And held its hands out for the chalice. I handed it over and the briar child held it above its head triumphantly. “Follow me!” they squeaked and dashed off deeper into the maze. We gave chase, dashing down corridors and around corridors, frantically trying to unspool our thread for finding our way back.

After about 5 minutes of dashing about, the child of briar came to an abrupt halt. “Alright!” They said, turning around to face the now panting party “You’ll find the centre of the maze just around that corner”. They then looked up expectantly. “Beiro, would you do the honours?” I said, realising it was now Beiro took a dagger from Melech (having only longer, less cumbersome weapons himself) and cut the palm of his hand, dropping the blood into the cup the child of briar was holding. As he did so, tendrils started to grow from the child’s hands into the cup and down to the blood. It reached the blood and started to drink, quickly draining all that had been offered. “So, about the orcs?” I pressed. “Oh yeah,” they shrugged “they tried to get to the centre of the maze, but didn’t get very far” That was weird “but we saw some of them stuck in the walls,” I said. “Maze is getting bigger” they shrugged again. “Well, I’ll be off now!!” they squeaked and dashed back off into the briar.

Peering around the corner, Baldwin and I could see a wide clearing, within which there was a humongous tree reaching up out of the briar and into the sky. There seemed to be an entranceway carved into the trunk inviting further investigation. Our group cautiously stepped out into the entranceway, then from behind the tree stepped out another figure to join us. A beautiful female humanoid figure wreathed in leaves. Amabilis. But her skin was slate grey, not the greens or oranges of the forest a dryad is supposed to be. She spoke, “Leave NOW interlopers, and you may yet escape with your lives”. I knelt slightly, in a last desperate attempt for reason “Amabilis, if any part of your true-self remains, you must tell us what we can do to save you, to remove this corruption”. Amabilis furrowed her brow “The only thing that shall be removed is YOU” and as she spoke she released a barrage of magic missiles towards my companions. Beiro and Baldwin both took a hit but Melech blocked it with a magical shield. Baldwin chuckled “Yeah, whatever. Get em Beiro!”, but before we could return fire, her form merged into the tree and disappeared from view. Moments later we heard a shout from high in the tree, Amabilis again “Begone! Leave this place!”

We made towards the opening in the tree and found the inside to have been carved out into a spiral staircase. I started muttering to myself “This is that hag’s doing. This is NOT good for the tree”. The stairs were clearly not grown through any natural influence, they were carved, probably a few months ago based on the state of the wood. Head down, angry about this, I almost bumped into Melech as there was a yelp up ahead. Sounds of fighting started, but on the tight staircase, I could not see who our assailant was. Melech, ahead of me, seemed to be in the same situation and pulled out a mirror. Passing it to Beiro to hold, he started firing off spells into it, ricocheting off with what sounded like tremendous accuracy. I positioned myself to try and see what was attacking us in the mirror and could make out what appeared to be a small amorphous figure. “I came from the tree” yelled Baldwin, in full combat with it. With only the mirror to go on, I started trying to hurl insults. “You’re uglier than a blobfish!” “I bet you always cry at movies because you’re a big SAP!”.

At this point, Baldwin fell and suddenly came sliding down the stairs, I was unable to avoid him in the tight space of the tree and took a tumble as his body came past. I quickly got up and, looking nervously back at his body, having caught on a knot a handful of steps down, I doubled down on the insults. “I bet you think this is a bit of a STICKY situation”, “I’m going to distil you into syrup!”. I’m not sure how much it was actually helping, because then Beiro’s body came sliding the stairs as well. After being knocked over again, I saw Melech now face to face with this creature and looking rather panicked. He turned to me “We are RETREATING after this” and put his fist through the mirror. The shards scattered out into the air around the globular creature and, spinning in place, started slashing into its form. Melech turned tail and pushed past me down the stairs, leaving me alone face to face with this…thing. It looked like it had already taken a lot of abuse, but it had already felled two of my companions and I wasn’t at my best either. Gritting my teeth, I pulled out my dagger and stabbed it straight in the middle its form. It started to crystallize around the blade and as the rest of the creature hardened, I swung the rapier around into the side of the tree, smashing it and sending chunks of crystalized sap skittering down the stairs.

I came down to find Melech trying to shake the others awake. “We need to move, let’s get out of the maze and try again tomorrow”. Frustratedly, I agreed. The thread would mean we should be able to get back to the middle again quickly and camping here wouldn’t give us much rest. I expended the last of my musical energy in waking Beiro and Baldwin from unconsciousness and we all started hurrying back out of the labyrinth.

We continue deeper into the maze. I hear some rustling and weird clicking noises. It sounded like it was coming from the hedge of the maze. I had a quick look around for it. The others said they hadn’t heard or seen anything. We continued at a more cautious pace further into the maze.

Some time later, the others stop. It seems they have spotted something. Melech informs us it is a Child of the Briar. I use the crown to speak Sylvan and try persuade it to speak to us.

We eventually entice it to speak to us by offering it a trade. It will guide us to the centre of the maze in exchange for the copper chalice we previously found and some of Beiro’s blood.

We follow it to the centre of the maze leaving a trail of string behind us. It stops suddenly and informs us that around the corner is a clearing where the dryad can be found. It takes some of Beriro’s blood but didn’t really provide us much information in return for it. I guess we didn’t really make a good deal. Wasn’t my blood though!

The Child of the Briar promptly leaves and I take a peek around the corner. There is indeed a clearing and in the centre what looks like a massive tree fashioned into a house. We cautiously enter the clearing.

The dryad approaches us threatening to kill us before firing magic missiles at Melech. Melech blocked these easily and the dryad retreated into the tree house. I enter the free house and continue up a spiral staircase that seemed to be hewn out of the trunk. The tree didn’t look in that good health.

Beiro follows me up the stairs with the others behind. So weird being of humanoid form forms in front of me. Seemingly from the tree sap. It attacks me landing heavy blows. I fail to focus and keep missing with my sword. The others were having more luck hitting it. One more set of blows and the next thing I know I am waking up at the bottom of the stairs.

From what we could see from the entranceway, passageways seemed to extend and lead off at random. It was a labyrinth. We quickly set about thinking up a strategy to avoid getting lost. Melech said that he had read a tale about a Minotaur in a labyrinth and a clever adventurer, when tasked with killing the Minotaur, had laid out a thread so that he did not get lost in said maze. Melech then volunteered up his hemp rope, which, although only 50 feet, was thick and made us of many strands. I spent the next hour or two unpicking it all, loosening the strands, then tying them back together end to end to make one long thread. Working with the rope for so long left my hands raw, but when I was finished we were left with the biggest ball of yarn I’d ever seen.

We entered the maze and took every left turn, doubling back on ourselves whenever we found a dead end. This approach meant we could cover the whole maze through our search to the centre. If we did end up going in a circle, we’d come across our own thread and could try something else.

Using this approach, we methodically made our way through the maze, but this wasn’t to be a mere wander. It wasn’t long before we rounded a corner to find some sort of creature extracting itself from the walls. Humanoid in shape, but composed entirely of wreathing vines. Another appeared on the other side of the path as well. “Interlopers, begone from this place” A voice said, echoing around the woods with no discernable source, likely the dryad in some form or another. Taking a deep breath, I announced “You have been corrupted, the unicorn protector of the Fey woods has said that you must, unfortunately, be excised.” No response. Then the vine monsters attacked. Melech started roasting them and Beiro hacked away, but the creatures reached out and one of them entangled Beiro in its vines. There was a yelp from behind, as Baldwin yelled “There’s more of them!” Grabbing one of the daggers I got from Smordin, I lashed out at the vines constricting Beiro and, surprised at my own dexterity, managed to cut him free without harming him. I shouted back to Baldwin “You’ve got our back, right?”

With a couple more attacks and spells, I could see Beiro and Melech had the situation under control with the creatures in front of us, so I spun around and threw the dagger I was holding into one of the two that Baldwin was fighting off behind us. It disappeared right into the chest of the viney mess, leaving nothing but an entry point. It then lashed out in anger at Baldwin, who had already been tangled a few times, and felled him.

I started to panic, the ones behind were bearing down on our now-open flank. I started to play my healing song, hoping it would be enough to raise Baldwin once more and as I played I could see him awakening “Come on Baldwin, you can do it, you’ve got these guys.” Baldwin staggered to his feet and lunged forwards, cleaving one of the creatures in two. Beiro rushed by giving backup now the danger at the front was gone and I whipped out my bow to fire an arrow at the other, the one I’d already hit. At short range it went straight into the hole the dagger had made before and with a gurgle the creature fell, the vines scattering across the ground.

“I think those were blights” Melech said, panting “just another sign of the corruption. I’m worried there’ll be more but, I think we need to take a rest”. So we did. It was an uneasy rest. Now that we were deep in the maze and had seen enemies come straight out of the wall, we couldn’t be sure we were safe. The sounds that filled the air were that of creaking wood, great boughs swaying in an eerily absent wind. Despite our concerns, we were able to take a bit of time to recover and started up once again

As we continued through the maze, I heard a very faint cry. “Help!” It said, in a thin weakened voice. “Hello!” I called out in Sylvan , “Where are you, how can we help you?” The same voice just came back again “Help!”. There was a corner up ahead, from which the sound seemed to be coming. We approached cautiously, wary of more trickery. The corner led to a hairpin, which led to a dead end, but sat on the ground at the dead end was a bush made of briar, from which the cry’s were emanating. On closer inspection it wasn’t a bush but a small cage, crafted from the same kind of briars present in the walls. Inside the cage was a pixie, much like the one we had ran into on our first trip into the Fey woods. It looked in incredible pain and torn to shreds by the briars, but was still alive.

Seeing it’s distress, I took out my dagger and started cutting away at the little briar bars, taking care not to tear my own hands up on the thorns. Unlike the walls we’d encountered, the bars on the cage came apart after just a little bit of knife work and it wasn’t long before I had cut most of them open.

I freed the pixie, but it continued to lay there motionless. Playing a song, I tried to coax it back to life. Bizarrely, it felt like it was trying to resist being healed, as though it didn’t want to recover. Despite this, I could see the song helping and some of the pixie’s cuts healing over. This only served to worsen its distress though and, all of a sudden there was a flash of pixie dust and it was gone. I whipped around, trying to see where it had disappeared to, but turned to find Beiro, eyes glazed over, swinging his sword towards me. I screamed out “Beiro, no! It’s me!” But to no effect. A white hot pain pierced my side as the sword sliced through. At that point, Wincing through the pain, I heard Baldwin project “Fey friend, stop” in Sylvan from around the corner.

Beiro came to his senses, but looked as confused as ever. Seeing me on the ground, he helped me to my feet. “What hurt you? Was it that fairy?” He asked. “Technically it was you” I said grumpily. “Oh” Beiro responded, then walked away. I steadied myself, then came around the corner to where Baldwin had been waiting. I saw him there, with the Fey Friend crown on show and the pixie a handful of feet away just staring at it. “Come here” Baldwin commanded “we’d like to know what you were doing here”. The pixie looked conflicted, wanting to flee but being held by some sort of power from the crown. It drifted slowly towards Baldwin and started speaking in a very jittery voice “I…err…the dryad, protector of all, commanded it, I was to…stay here, in that cage, yes”

“The unicorn sent us, we’ve come to deal with the corrupted dryad” Baldwin said, speaking very authoritatively. The pixie looked aghast and started to panic again, incredibly conflicted. “Look” I said, softly “We don’t want to harm the dryad if we don’t need to. Can you think of any other way that we can deal with the corruption?”. The pixie continued to fret and looked to be thinking very fast, but eventually slumped its shoulders and gave a very resigned shake of the head.
“I think you should get out of here” Baldwin suggested “it’s not safe for you here. If you get clear of the corruption you might feel better.” The pixie looked confused. “Out of here?” It squeeked “but how?” “We have a rope,” Baldwin said “follow it and you’ll find your way out.” The pixie looked down at the thread we had laid, fluttered down to the floor and held it. “Ok” it said quietly “follow the rope” and putting one hand over the other, it started to tread away, straight down a passageway we knew was a dead end, where the rope doubled back. “No, no, no!” Baldwin called out “That’s a dead end, you can follow the other rope now”. The fairy looked at the rope to its side, back at the one in its hand and shivered. “Nooooo” it moaned and carried on down the rope it was on. I put my hand on Baldwin’s shoulder “Leave her” I said “I think keeping it simple is the way to go”

Content there was some chance the pixie might succeed, we set off again, although I started to worry about the gash on my side

We entered into the maze and followed a strategy of turning left at each junction. Amafey and Melech insisted this was guaranteed to get us to the middle. Not wishing to get lost we split a rope to make a large ball of string. We would mark our route with it.

After sometime in the maze I heard a noise behind me. Two weird vein beings attacked me. They kept grabbing me and preventing me from attacking. It seemed the others were busy fighting something else. I managed to hit it a few times but it refused to go down. It managed to land a heavy blow on me, downing me.

I woke a short time later. It seemed I had been knocked out and the others were finsing off the vein beings. After the battle Melech informed us that they were blights.

We continue into the maze and came to a deadend. There was a pixie stuck in some kind of cage. I stood guard while the others attempted to free and help it. A short while later I heard a commotion and a the pixie comes flying past. I was wearing the crown so shouted out in Sylvan and managed to convince it to come back.

It sits on my shoulder and we learn from it the dryad is here and as we expected been corrupted. I tell it that it should leave and can find the way out by following the string we had marked our route with. It leave and we discussed what to do next. We come to the agreement that we should continue deeper into the maze.

We continued north at a slow pace. After a few hours Beiro stopped and informed us there was a clearing up ahead. I began to argue with Melech about what our approach should be but Amafey told us to be quite.

Approaching the clearing there were several orc corpses and a fallen tree. The tree was weird looking and maybe capable of walking. It was probably what killed the orcs.

Suddenly I heard heavy stomping heading in our direction. The others fled from the clearing back into the woods. Bloody cowards… Especially Beiro, isn’t he supposed to be able to fight?

Into the clearing came a short humanoid with huge boots and a red hat. He threatened to cut me down, I doubt it! While I did get knocked down, only temporarily, by a dishonorable kick to the shins, I was soon up fighting again and the red hatted midget was soon dead.

It seemed that another one of them had entered the clearing. With assistance from spells cast by both Amafey and Melech, Beiro and I made short work of him as well.

We discussed what to do next before deciding to camp for the night further back in the woods. Before leaving though Beiro and I decided to take one of the pair of boots. Melech objected to it but we were carrying them so what could he do…

Melech and I setup camp while Amafey and Beiro headed into the woods to forage and collect firewood. When I went to look in my bag however something was off. My mess kit was gone! Melech checked his bag and found that his ink had been split all over it. Seems the Fey were up to their usual pointless tricks.

Amafey and Beiro returned and we informed them about the happenings. It was decided I should call out in Sylvan and try deal with the situation. So I did and there was a sudden blue flash before I was slapped across the face! Giggling followed and what ever it was fled back into the woods. I wasn’t amused, now having nothing to eat my dinner from. Amafey played some music and sang in Sylvan. Presumably to try attract the Fey again. It was a good performance but I was glad it didn’t work as I was in no mood for more of the Fey’s tomfoolery.

We turned in for the night with Amafey taking the first watch. I was awaken a short time into my sleep by some sort of commotion. Going outside Amafey was looking rather perturbed. Amafey informed us that the Satyrs from before and come to the camp and maybe tried to abduct her. At this point I was rather tired and was pondering if Amafey’s abduction might have been the preferable outcome. Trying to shake such ideas from my head I mumbled something about being more careful before going back off to bed.

The next day we continued north, the thorns were growing even thicker and made for slow progress. After some hours we hit what looked like a thorn wall. There were orc corpses stuck in it at points. We followed the wall before coming to an opening. An archway of kinds into what looked like a maze.

As we proceeded Northwards, hacking our way through the thickening brambles, the forest grew darker and ever more sinister. Even though we knew it was only mid-afternoon, the little amount of light now filtering down through the trees gave the impression of an impending dusk. We were getting closer.

After several hours trawling through the undergrowth, Beiro stopped the group. Whispering, he passed back the message there was a clearing up ahead. It looked like a felled tree had opened a gap in the canopy. We approached with caution, although I had to shush Baldwin and Melech as they started bickering about something behind me. Reaching the edge of the clearing, we could see several orc corpses, along with what looked like the felled tree. Something clearly being fishy, we started investigating. The orcs all had the warpaint we had seen before, although had been clearly slain, covered in cuts and bruises. The tree, however, was the most curious item in the clearing. It looked humanoid and as though it could’ve walked on a pair of feet, unlike Old Mother Basket’s tree which had walked on its roots. The whole clearing was also covered by heavy footprints, perhaps by the tree, but maybe something else?

Before we could come up with any other theories, we started hearing a heavy stomping echoing throughout the woods. It appeared to be heading in our direction, so all of us, except Baldwin, scattered into the undergrowth. As we waited and the stomping grew closer, we saw a rustle in the undergrowth from which emerged a rather short man but wearing large iron boots. He had a long unkempt beard and wore a large red hat. He was also carrying a menacing looking sickle. “I’m gonna cut you down to size!” He screamed, seeing Baldwin in the clearing and started clomping towards him, but at that point a handful of rays of fire skidded out from the undergrowth into his chest, followed by a javelin hitting him in the leg. Baldwin met him in the middle and landed a couple of hits of his own.

I was weighing up my options when our foe, now clearly incensed further by the pain, kicked Baldwin in the shins. The sound of metal on bone rang out in the clearing and Baldwin was immediately on the floor, not unconscious, but obviously in a lot of pain. Then I realised, the boots! I moved forward out of the undergrowth and started to play, but at that moment, another one of these creatures had entered the clearing. I wasn’t sure if anyone else had noticed him yet, so I turned my attention on him instead. Playing a rhythmic dance tune, I started heating the metal of the boots, causing the newcomer to hop around involuntarily in time with the music.

My decision was shortly verified, as it only took another barrage of fire from Melech to take out the initial threat. Having been alerted to his presence by the cries of pain, Beiro and Melech switched to the newcomer and started attacking him. I took my bow and arrow out, firing a shot into his chest and using the bowstring to keep the rhythm of the heat metal going. This assault took its toll and Melech shortly landed another killing blow with three more rays to its face. As the angry creature fell, the forest grew quiet again and it seemed as though no more danger was imminent.

As we could see it was now getting dark, we agreed to back up a bit, making camp a little way to the south where it had seemed to be safe. Beiro and Baldwin decided to keep a pair of the iron boots as a souvenir, much to Melech’s annoyance. We soon found somewhere sensible to make camp and Beiro and I set off to find food, while Baldwin and Melech set up the camp. There wasn’t much wildlife to be found and, while we managed to take out a couple of pigeons, most of what we brought back were mushrooms and berries. As we returned to the camp, Melech seemed uneasy. “There’s something about” he said, when we returned “Baldwin’s mess kit is gone and my ink’s been spilt all over my parchment, ruining it” Playing devil’s advocate a bit, not wanting a night of worry, I proposed alternative ideas “Maybe Baldwin just forgot his mess kit and your ink became uncorked in your bag?” Melech saw through my ruse in an instant. “We’re in the Fey woods, we should be on our guard,” he said sternly. “I don’t think they mean us any harm though, it’s just usual Fey trickery” Baldwin piped up. “Maybe try calling out? Preferably in Sylvan?” I suggested. “You know Sylvan, don’t you?” Baldwin said plainly. “Ah yes, but you also have a crown of friendship, so surely that’s the better bet?” I countered. “Fine,” Baldwin said gruffly and, taking off his hood to reveal the crown spoke out “Fey friends, reveal yourself!” At that moment there was a flash of blue and a smacking sound as something slapped Baldwin across the face. Whatever entity was responsible for it giggled and flashed back into the undergrowth. I did my best to suppress my own giggle at this sight. Baldwin sighed. I then tried enticing them out again, playing a song in Sylvan and made what was probably my best performance to date…to a crowd containing just our party. We clearly weren’t having any joy, so the others turned in for the night, while I took the first watch, agreeing to keep one eye focused on our equipment.

It must have been about half an hour later when I heard a rustle from the undergrowth. I picked up my bow and turned to see where it had come from, then lowered it as I saw a humanoid figure approaching slowly. “Hello there!” I called out quietly “Hello! It’s good to see you” came a voice back and as they came into my vision, I could see it was a Satyr, one from the other day in fact. “What brings you this far North?” I asked, “I thought this was a place for misery, not joy and mirth”. “We heard your performance, we wanted you to come and play with us again” he responded, cheerily as ever. “I…errr…well, thank you.” Something was off. I didn’t feel like they meant me any harm, certainly not directly, but, I felt like it was important I went. I also didn’t want to mysteriously vanish and leave the camp unguarded either though. “Let me wake up one of my friends, let them know where I’m going“. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he said calmly and I noticed the two others that we had danced with before appearing from the side. I felt a calming voice in my head tell me it was fine, I should just go with them and it almost took me, but I shook the idea off. I made a move towards the tent and one of the satyrs reached out as if to grab me. I ducked out of the way, reached into the tent and found Beiro’s leg. Shaking it I hissed “Beiro, wake up, I need you to take watch” “Wha-?” I heard groggily from the tent “There are some satyrs here and I feel I should go with them, I-” and, at that point, I turned around and realised they’d all vanished. “What’s going on?” Beiro asked, emerging from the tent, now more awake. “There were…satyrs…here, they…” I stammered, now perplexed by what had happened. Melech stirred “Wha..? Is it time for my watch?” he muttered. “What’s going on out there?” I heard bellowed from the other tent. Gathering my half-asleep companions together, I explained what had happened and, despite no-one else actually seeing the satyrs, they all believed me. Melech chastised me for being so ready to go with the satyrs though and he was right, going off on our own here would be dangerous. I just…perhaps my curiosity almost got the better of me again. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Despite shaking my way through the rest of my watch, the rest of the night passed without incident and we continued North once again. After a couple more hours hacking slowly through what was a torrent of thorns, we hit a wall of briar that seemed all but impassable. Hacking at it didn’t seem to make a dent and Melech couldn’t get it to catch light either. Looking down the wall, we caught sight of another orc corpse, the briars growing around it. “I’m starting to think we might not be doing the right thing here” Melech muttered, “the dryad looks like she’s stopping the orcs coming through the forest.” I nodded slowly “I can see where you’re coming from, but…I think the forest might have been defending itself before. These corpses were here before the briar grew around them…” “Perhaps you’re right. Well, let’s start moving our way around to the East, we might find an opening” Melech suggested. “That seems…optimistic, but its worth a go” I mused. East makes the most sense for where we want to go next too” I said. So East we went and it wasn’t long until we did indeed find an opening “well, fair enough” I said, surprised there was such a convenient entry point. We peered inside and saw that the briar walls went inwards and stretched out into a maze of paths and corridors. The corrupted dryad had laid out a den and we’d have to enter it to find her…

As we approached Westpine, we saw the woodcutter who would had borrowed the cart from, but when he saw us he glared back briefly, turned and went inside. Similarly, children playing were scooped up by their parents and taken inside. By the time we reached the square, no-one was to be seen and a deathly quiet had swept over Westpine

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this” I muttered quietly. “Might be because we’ve got the ex-bandits with us” Baldwin suggested, “maybe we should go to the tavern, see if anyone’s there and work out what to do next…”. Checking the tavern, it still remained vacant, a layer of dust beginning to settle on the various surfaces. We gathered in the bar, whilst Baldwin found a mug and poured himself some ale from one of the taps. “I think I should go out and announce Old Mother Basket’s death, although I’d appreciate the back up in case things go horribly wrong.” I looked over at Baldwin, he obviously wasn’t bothered about going anywhere, feet up, quaffing his drink. “I’ll come” Beiro piped up. “Yes, it’s probably best if I come too” Melech followed up. We left and set up in the square.

I took my ukulele out and strummed a large resonating chord “Villagers of Westpine, the hag has been…err…removed. You shall no longer have to worry about, umm, deals and … trickery”. I was struggling to find the words and was not evoking any response. I played myself a little song to psych myself up before trying again. I thought back to the first time I played in Westpine, another strong performance that must have brought out most of the village. I started playing some of the songs that had gone down well that night, to try and draw people out. As I played, I saw a child appear at the window of one of the houses, smiling at the sound of the music. I winked at them, shortly before they disappeared and the shutters slammed shut once more. Then, from another part of the village, we heard a yell. “Begone servants of Mother Basket, you bring nothing but misery!”. This was an in, at least “We are sorry for any misfortune we’ve caused to your village, but Old Mother Basket is dead. We have killed her. She manipulated us too but was a curse upon the forest and we have removed her”.

The front door of a house on the other side of the river slowly creaked open. A man in his mid-40s or so cautiously poked his head around the door “Is it true? Is she gone?” He asked, with a slight crack to his voice. “Yes! I implore you to believe us! We, unfortunately, have little proof, but I can recount what has happened”, I responded. The man looked deep in thought for a moment, then nodded, “OK, I believe you, come inside and let’s hear what you have to say” and beckoned the three of us over to his house and inside. It was a simple abode, but a little larger than any of the houses in the village. “Are you the leader around here, say, the village elder?” I asked. He chuckled “How old do you think I am? I don’t know about elder, but…yes, people tend to come to me if they have any concerns. My name is Arthur”. “My name is Amafey Craftwolf and these are my companions,” I said, gesturing to the others “My name is Melech” “Beiro”. “Pleased to meet you” Arthur responded, “Now, you were going to tell me about what happened to Old Mother Basket and your part in the disappearance of Warwick and his wife?” “Warwick?” I responded, surprised that Arthur knew about the demise of our hireling. “That was the name of the owner of the now abandoned tavern,” Arthur said woefully. “Ah, that is an … unfortunate coincidence. “ I said, quite surprised at the fact. Arthur leaned his head quizzically “How so?” “Well, let me explain everything”. I then told the stories of our adventures, as chronicled so far in these pages. I didn’t leave out any details, much to the protest of Melech and he and Beiro left half an hour into my storytelling.

“Well, you certainly are a good storyteller,” Arthur said cheerily as I finished the story a couple of hours later. I blushed a bit “It’s kind of my thing” I said quietly. Arthur stood up, beaming “Well if you’re to be believed, the village owes you a great debt if there’s anything we can do to repay you just let me know.” “There is one thing,” I said slowly, ready to put my previous plan into action “The hirelings that have been with us. I think their Warwick dying has told us all that things might be getting too dangerous for them. I was hoping that, well, they might be able to take over the empty tavern?” Arthur tilted his head up, thinking, “you mentioned they used to be bandits, yes?” I gulped, maybe I should’ve spared some details of the story “Yes, but I believe they were victims of circumstance. They’ve been nothing but helpful and trustworthy since joining us” Arthur nodded sagely “Yes, ok, maybe they would be a good fit to get the tavern up and running again”.

At this point, a bugle sounded from the centre of the village. I started up, worried about any incoming danger. “Is that a village signal of some kind?” I asked. Arthur shook his head quickly “not one of ours”. We peaked cautiously out of the window. There, in the middle of the square, was a knight, wearing the colours of Steward Dreven. He was holding up a sheet of parchment and at that moment began to read from it. “Citizens of Westpine, the steward requires your assistance. If you are capable, you are to arm yourselves and report to Springgate. Norcragden has fallen and the orcs threaten are bearing down on own civilised towns. Any militia assembled at Springgate to repel them will be remunerated appropriately.” He put down the scroll, turned his horse and headed back along the road at a gallop.

“That’s…worrying, we’ll need to work out where our little group stands on this,” I said, turning back to Arthur. Arthur nodded, “I do imagine we’ll need to have a village meeting about this, I’ll arrange something within the next couple of hours”. I bid Arthur farewell for now and headed back to the tavern. “Ah, Amafey” I heard as I entered the tavern. Melech was leaning back on a stool, next to Baldwin and Beiro, all sat a separate from the hirelings, “we were just waiting on you before deciding what to do next. I presume you saw and heard the announcement too?” “I did, also, Baldwin, you’re going to have to pay the hirelings for that beer, I got them the tavern” All of the hirelings did a double take, clearly surprised my little plan had worked. “What beer?” Baldwin said as he tossed the mug back onto the bar with a clatter.

Turning back to the matter at hand “So what was the plan?” I asked the others, who’d already had a little time to discuss. Beiro grinned, “I think we should go and kill some orcs” Beiro doesn’t like orcs much. Baldwin shrugged, “I think we should go back to Coombesgate, but I don’t want to get involved in this war.” They were clearly leaning towards being done with the forest. “Well, we still need to deal with the Dryad, I don’t want to leave the job half-finished, the village could still be under threat” I countered, trying to convince them to finish the job “We killed Old Mother Basket, they’ll be fine, unless they get invaded by orcs of course” Baldwin countered. Melech raised a finger “actually, I’m with Amafey on this. We’ve got much to learn about the forest and we’re not exactly front line soldiers if we did end up in a warzone”. “Speak for yourself” quipped Beiro.
Then I had an idea. “Hang on, Baldwin, have you got a map of the barony?” He shook his head, “No, but…I might be able to sketch something in the dirt?” We headed outside. A few villagers were now milling around but were now fervently discussing the mounted visitor to pay us much heed. Baldwin started sketching out a few locations “So, we’re here, in the West. The dryad is somewhere north of us, Coombesgate is to the east and Springgate is north of that.” I started pointing north of Westpine. “Let’s say we deal with the dryad. We don’t need to stick to the roads, do we? We could cut cross-country, eastwards, and see if we could catch the orcs from behind. If we could take out this supposed war chief of theirs, the army would suffer and we’d be hailed as heroes.” “That…might actually work,” Melech said thoughtfully. I turned to Baldwin, “What do you think?”. Baldwin shook his head “I still don’t want to get involved, I think we should head south, get out of the way”. Melech rounded on him “There’s every chance that these orcs could reach Coombesgate and tear everything up there. Do you think they’ll stop?” He was getting agitated. Not flaming eyes, shaking ground agitated, but still clearly miffed at Baldwin’s current attitude “This is a good chance to get the better of them. You saw how idiotic Dreven’s men were back at Coombesgate. If they’re even slowing the orc army down, our efforts should have a profound effect, especially if we can get the jump on them.” Baldwin sighed, “fine, let’s get moving then”. I looked over at Beiro, who was staring at the map on the ground. “Sound good to you, Beiro?” I asked “Err… yep!” He said, looking back up. There were orcs in the plan, that was good. We headed back inside to gather our things, say goodbye to the hirelings and set off.

I approached Neddie with the coin purse I had for the party and started counting out silver and gold from it. “So, I guess as we’re saying goodbye, we should pay you. 5 days for 5 of you at 3 silver pieces a day would be 75 silver, or 7 and a half gold”. Melech cleared his throat “there are four of them” he said pointedly. “Well, I thought it was only fair to give them Warwick’s share between them” Melech wasn’t having it “This is the party funds and I’m saying no, they’re already getting a tavern out of this.” I looked at Baldwin “I’d rather not give them anything, but whatever.” I sighed and handed over 4 gold and 20 silver. Then, as the others started to leave, I took Neddie to one side. I rummaged in my coin purse and produced twenty gold coins. I handed them to him “This is from my own funds, I want you to have a good start at the tavern. You’ve been a great help to us and I’m so sorry about what happened to Warwick. Neddie pushed my hand back “No, you shouldn’t it’s fine. We’ll be fine. You really shouldn’t”. He’d changed, a week ago he would’ve scooped that in an instant, yet here he was, refusing several weeks worth of washes. I opened his hand and deposited the coins inside. “I insist. Get the tavern up and running again and we’ll all come back for a drink sometime. Tell you what, consider this a request to make sure the village stays standing too, ok?” “Err…yeah, ok, sure” he grinned weakly. They probably wouldn’t last that long if the orcs got this far…

Melech cleared his throat again loudly from the doorway. I quickly scooped up the rest of my things. “Right, I…errr… best be off” I stuttered, realising Melech probably saw all that anyway. Neddie offered his hand and I shook it, followed by Kia hurrying over and giving me a big hug. As I left, silent Gregory gave me a nod and One-eyed Dennis…winked, I think. The tavern should be fine in their hands, right?

We headed back to Westpine and entered the tavern. The back door was still unlocked. Having had enough of all the messing around I just settled down for a few pints of ale. Amafey, Beiro and Melech headed out into the village to locate the village elder or something like that.

The bandits stayed behind and drank as well, looking rather dejected. I left them alone. I hope to soon be rid of them. After a while Beiro and Melech returned to tavern and joined in he drinking. Amafey was with the village elder telling him of our defeat of the hag.

Some while later we heard a commotion outside. A man on a horse wearing the barron’s colours had arrived. He began shouting out a message about the Orcs having taken Norcragden and that the villagers should prepare. Old news to us.

He left as quickly as he had come and I returned to the tavern. It seemed Amafey had finished telling our story to the village elder. The elder had agreed to Amafey’s plan of giving the tavern to the bandits.

We discussed what to do next. I had wanted to return to Coombesgate. The hag had been killed after all and there wasn’t anything left to be gained here. However the others insisted that we stay and deal the corruptions. I was about ready to split from them but Amafey promised there might be some gold in it for me. Never wanting to miss the opportunity to earn some easy coin I agreed to stay with them awhile longer.

We headed back into the forest and headed north in search of the dryad.

After catching our breath following the frantic battle, calm returned to the clearing. I thanked the hirelings for their help, particularly against the tree, their assault had probably saved my life. The others had started looking for anything of interest in the house and I warned the hirelings to wait outside while we cleared anything dangerous from inside. As it turns out, there was very little of interest inside the house. All of us searched thoroughly, under and in every nook and cranny and didn’t turn up anything of much use. Even using my song which resonates with any sources of magic picked very little up, except the house itself and a pie on the windowsill. I did a small loop outside the house and didn’t find anything unusual there either, except some recently upturned earth, perhaps a couple of days old.

Checking the walls inside and out did not lead to any clues as to how the roaming cottage functioned and it seemed rooted in place where it was at the moment. Baldwin suggested maybe it was just a perception thing, making you think you were somewhere you weren’t. Now that Old Mother Basket was dead, we weren’t likely to find out and it wasn’t going to go walking off on its own. As for the pie, something was very suspicious about it and my curiosity kept bringing me back to it. I considered using the identify scroll but remembered what Melech had said before about the fact it might struggle with the hag magic. As it started to rain outside, I told the hirelings it was safe inside now, but to avoid the pie. Melech offered everyone a cup of tea and didn’t seem too shifty about it (not that the hirelings would know to suspect anything), so we all warmed ourselves inside as Baldwin started digging through the earth (we shared the same suspicions and he had been kind enough to volunteer to investigate).

After a little time inside, Baldwin reappeared from his digging, looking quite wet and muddy. “As I thought, it’s the innkeeper and his wife. They were missing their clothes, so I suspect old mother basket just kills them, then makes the scarecrows as warnings”. As he was explaining, I looked over and caught Neddie about to stick his finger in the pie. “Hey! What did I say about that? Stop it!” I called over. The hireling looked back at me a bit crestfallen, “Oh, it looks good though, could we at least have some rations, it must be well past lunchtime by now…” he said. Beiro stood up. “I will find some food” and marched out of the house. Baldwin watched him then turned around and said “I should probably go with him..” and followed Beiro out.

They reappeared about an hour later with, in addition to more than enough berries and plants to supplement our rations, the corpse of a chunky boar. Beiro looked very pleased with himself. I could see the hirelings with their mouths agape, both impressed and drooling slightly at the thought what it’s going to be like to eat. Unfortunately, it would still need a fair amount of preparation, so it wasn’t going to be a boaring lunch. We agreed to head back to the Fey Friend’s house for the evening and take a much-needed rest after having got Old Mother Basket off of our backs. I took one last look at the pie, but before I could decide what to do with it, Baldwin came over and hurled it out of the window. The contents scattered on the grass outside and it looked…pretty much like a normal meat pie. Still a mystery. Oh well, I definitely wasn’t going to eat it now.

As we started travelling back, the slightly smouldering tree waymarked our previous battleground. There was no sign of the tin soldiers. It dawned on me that I never saw the body of the first one that Baldwin and Beiro had slain and had been much more concerned about chasing after Old Mother Basket to see what happened when I slew the second. It was possible the enchantment was gone and they’d returned to normal and I started searching in the tall grass. Maybe they were not lost to me after all! After explaining my thinking, the others started searching too, but we were searching for some time with no luck. I started to get a bit frantic, they must be here somewhere! They’re the only thing I’ve got left of my mother’s. Absent-mindedly I strummed at my ukulele, slowly forming words about our epic battle with the tin soldiers. I’d just gotten halfway through the second verse when Melech called out from 5 feet to my right. “I’ve found them!”. He handed them over, but as he did so, I grabbed his arm and pulled him down to give him a peck on the cheek. He looked perturbed, although he might have been going bright red for all I know. “Thank you Melech” I said, relieved. I looked down at the soldiers and noticed that, in addition to being torn apart, one was warped and slightly melted and the other also had significant gashes in it (including a big hole in its chest). These will indeed make for a good story. Our search concluded, we continued onwards to the mansion and arrived without further incident.

Back at the mansion, I poured another round from the dwarven ale keg and passed it around to everyone. Baldwin started carving up the boar and made particularly short work of it. It wasn’t long before we had a roast boar and mushroom (they seemed to grow in abundance around the house) stew ready for dinner, with the rest of the boar stripped and cooked for cold meats the next day. For the rest of the evening, we drank, were merry and exchanged stories. That is, except Melech, who sequestered himself to read in some quiet corner of the mansion.

As the next dawn broke and the morning mist slowly lifted, we met up in the front room to discuss our next moves. “As much as it pains me to say it, we need to sort that dryad out” I pointed out. “We also need to check to see whether those scarecrows are still there” Melech suggested, as we worked through our ‘to-do’ list. Baldwin then spoke up “That’s on the way back to Westpine, we should tell them they don’t have anything to fear from Old Mother Basket anymore”. It was a sensible suggestion and it gave us a good starting point to venture deeper into the forest from, in our search of the dryad. All in agreement, we packed our things together, locked the door and headed back along the stream.

It wasn’t long before we reached the scarecrow’s spot on the river and there they were, still alive, still moving, still creepy. I laid out the plan, “Let’s set ourselves up to attack from range, they won’t be able to attack and even if they do start moving, then we should have an advantage”. Everyone nodded and we clustered in a line on the far edge of the river. “On my signal!” I called out and loosened an arrow right between the beady eyes of one of the scarecrows. Almost immediately, it unrooted itself and started hopping in our direction. Another volley of arrows followed, as the scarecrow’s partner also sucked itself out of the ground. They went for the middle of the group, I couldn’t quite see who for exactly, but their advance was short lived as I heard an incantation from Melech and a burst of fire. Even in the damp air, the straw burnt quickly and it only took a couple more knocks to finish the scarecrows off. A job well done, we marched on to the next pair.

We started our fight with the second pair in much the same way, with a similar effect. I remembered what Old Mother Basket had done, hurling insults to inflict damage, and I thought it was worth a try. As one of the scarecrows was bouncing towards us, I started singing:
“You could while away the hours
Conferrin’ with the flowers,
Consulting with the rain;
And your head you’d be a scratchin’
While your thoughts are busy hatchin’
If you only had a brain.”
As I finished, the scarecrow flinched and looked stunned for a moment. Success! I tried again, as others fired their arrows “Can’t you hear me? What’s wrong? Straw in your ears?” This time there was no reaction. It needs some work.

As this was going on, the scarecrows dived into the middle of our line again. I didn’t have a good view again, but as one of the scarecrows fell, I saw another body hit the floor. “Warwick!” I heard Neddie yell out and a vengeful flurry of arrows took out the remaining scarecrow. As it hit the floor, the other hirelings gathered around Warwick’s body on the floor. “Warwick, wake up!” Dennis was yelling, trying to shake him. I looked over his shoulder to see a massive gash in his chest, eyes wide open, but clearly not breathing anymore. “He’s dead!” Neddie spat. “I…I’m so sorry” I stammered, “I thought after…Old Mother Basket and….everything else, that this wouldn’t be that dangerous. We got careless, I’m so sorry. If you feel you want to part ways when we get to Westpine, I understand, we might be getting you too much over your head.” Neddie sighed “It’s probably best that we do, this adventuring lark is not for us.” “We’ll rest here for a while, I’ll leave you be while you mourn poor Warwick” I said quietly and let them be.

We rested for a time as the hirelings buried Warwick’s body and built a small cairn to mark it. Melech made some more tea, but this time a glint in his eye told me he was up to something. I felt like I owed him after finding the soldiers and we were unlikely to see the hirelings much more again, so I walked over and whispered in his ear “just this once”. All of the hirelings were really starting to like tea and they slowly drunk, all holding their mugs staring into space. As we slowly got ready to move off again, I approached Neddie with an idea, “I know if you’re not travelling with us you’ll need some way to make a living and you don’t want to be going back into banditry, especially not with us around.” I winked “The tavern in Westpine will be in need of a new owner, we can talk to the people there and see if we can set you guys up running it?” Neddie pondered it for a moment “Well, maybe, but it’s not exactly something we’ve done before”. I patted him on the shoulder “I’ll see what we can do”. How hard could it be to run a tavern?

I searched the hag’s house but found nothing of real interest or value, other than a suspicious looking pie. Outside we found what looked like a set of recently dug graves. I decided to dig out one of the graves to determine who was buried there. I was sad but not surprised to the body of the tavernkeeper. The other graves were likely his wife and other missing villagers.

I returned to the cottage to find Amafey and Melech still busy investigating its contents. Beiro and I decided to set out for a hunt. It would pass the time and help restock our rations. After a while we came across a boar and easily took it down. We returned triumphantly with it to the cottage.

By this time Amafey and Melech had finished what ever they were doing and after some discussion we decided to return the fey friend’s house. Amafey however kept bringing up the damn pie, like it was something important. I certainly wasn’t going to eat that. Not wanting to waste more time at the cottage, I picked up the pie and throw it out the window. That was that and we set off back to the house.

A short while into the journey Amafey insisted that we return to where we had killed the tin soldiers and attempt to find them. When we got to the location they could not immediately be seen. They must have shrunk back to their original size. We eventually found them after quite a bit of searching, a bit more damaged than before.

We arrived back the house and I set about butchering the boar and then roasting it. The evening was then spent eating, drinking and relaxing. The next morning we got up and came to an agreement that we should head back to Westpine.

On the way it was decided that we should kill the scarecrows to make sure they wound’t be a threat to anyone else. The first pair went down easily enough, though we discovered they could move. The second pair were equally easy to kill yet somehow one of the hirelings, Cheating Warwick, managed to get themselves killed…

We let the other hirelings bury him and discussed with them about the end of their service with us. About time really, I had never wanted to hire them in first place. One of Amafey’s crazy plans. She had a new one now! To give the bandits a new life as tavernkeepers, after all the old one was no more. I tried to object, stating that the Tavern wasn’t our to give, but no one was listening.

I let loose with a few arrows hitting the hag, before drawing my sword and moving in for the attack. The hag threw to the ground two toy tin soldiers, which turned into two full sized ones. She then moved as to retreat away from us. Amafey began to play one of her tunes and one of the tin soldiers began to glow. Beiro and I, with help from the hirelings arrows, made short work of the tin soldiers.

I looked up to see Melech pursuing the hag. The hag reached out touching a tree before vanishing. Amafey cast a spell in an attempt to reveal her, but to no avail. Melech pulled out a scroll of see invisibly and using its power directed us after the hag.

As I ran in the direction of the hag I heard a commotion behind. The tree that had been touched by the hag had become animated and was attacking the others, knocking out Melech with a heavy blow. I turned around and ran back to engage the tree.

The hirelings had manged to hit with a few arrows and Amafey was playing music again causing the arrow heads to glow. This set fire to the tree and it began to lashing out wildly. I moved cutting at it with my sword. The tree was badly fire damaged and crashed to ground under my blows.

Amafey had revived Melech and we began to seek the hag again. Melech couldn’t see her anymore but we set of in the direction we had seen her going. We enter a clearing and we saw the hag’s house up ahead. She was standing in the doorway, so naturally I drew my bow and shot an arrow at her. It sail through her, just a bloody illusion. Never mind her tricks won’t work forever.

A number of scarecrows were directly in front of the house so we split up to go around them. Amafey and I, along with a few hirelings headed to the right, while Beiro, Melech and others went left. As we got closer to the house the shutters slammed shut. Beiro approached the front door and attempted to gain entry but the door proved too much for him. Melech kindly assisted with a spell and we gained access, seeing the hag in the now open doorway. Feeling a sudden surge of surety I fired off an arrow before charging into the house. The hag was blocking the way preventing the others getting an angle of attack. I gave her a shove back into the cottage before moving in for the kill. The others followed and we soon had her cornered, inflicting heavy damage upon her.

Suddenly the hag somehow managed to move through the wall! I wasn’t going to let her get away and sprinted back out the house and around the side. It seems Amafey had been standing directly where the hag had try to exit through the wall and had blocked her getaway.

I swung my flail landing a heavy blow, shattering the hag’s skull all over the wall. NICE.

With the battle now commenced, I decided we needed some music. Inspiration came to me and I started playing to spur Beiro along, coming up with a new song called “I need a Beiro”. If only I could think of a way to make it more generic, maybe it’s something I could play in taverns. As I started playing, as well as seeing Beiro start focusing, one of the tin soldiers started glowing red hot. It lashed out at Beiro and made contact, leaving a clear burn on his flesh. “Sorry!” I yelled, worried that I had put us at a disadvantage. Baldwin, Beiro and the hirelings made short work of it though, as the heat seemed to be weakening the metal as well.

As the others were attacking the tin soldiers, Melech was trying to get after Old Mother Basket, but as I looked over, she put her hand on a tree and disappeared. “She’s gone invisible” yelled Melech, clearly recognising the spell and fired off a couple of spells into the remaining tin soldier. “Dammit!” I cursed, stepped up to behind Beiro and cast faerie fire where we had last seen her, but she was gone.

Melech threw open his bag and pulled out a scroll. His eyes glowed white as he read it and then pointed through the woods “She’s making a run for it!” And started giving chase. The remaining soldier had shifted in my direction, so I went to hit it, landing my blade right in the middle of its chest and thrusting up to the hilt. It went limp, the last of the magical energy dissipating. With the foe dealt with, I started following Melech and could hear Baldwin, Beiro and the hirelings giving chase. Beiro’s fully enraged form stormed past the both of us, but as he passed the tree Old Mother Basket had touched, it swung around with one of its boughs, narrowly missing Beiro’s. Melech and I saw this and dodged out the way of more incoming branches. “Avoid the tree!” I shouted to the others but breathed a sigh of relief as we’d gotten clear. I didn’t even finish my breath before the tree pulled itself out of the ground and started pursuing us, swinging wildly. Caught off guard, one of the branches slammed Melech in the side of the chest, knocked him clean off of his feet and onto the ground, unconscious. “Shit!” I started muttering, as the tables seemed to be turning against us. Yelling out to Beiro and Baldwin, “we’ve got a situation here!”, although they had now gotten quite far ahead of us.

The hirelings were still off to the sides and following my direction, fired a volley of arrows into the tree, a handful of them embedding themselves into the bank. I remembered the song from before and started to play, focusing on the metal arrow tips. Sure enough, they also started to glow red hot, like the tin soldier, and started to set the bark alight. The tree was clearly in pain and lashed out towards me, but I rolled out of the way. I now focusied on retrieving one of the potions we’d found at the Fey Friend’s house from the top of my backpack while maintaining the song. Willing it to work, I dumped the contents into Melech’s mouth. I smacked him in the side of the face as he opened his eyes. “Wha-?” “Oh thank goodn- GET UP!” I yelled, now redoubling my efforts on the song. The arrow heads flared again, sending jets of fire through the tree, now thoroughly engulfed in flame. At this point Baldwin returned to our position and swung his sword like a woodcutters axe clear into the side of the tree. The now desiccated trunk gave way to the sword and one swoop was all it took to tip the tree from its roots. All of us breathing a sigh of relief, Melech got back to his feet and looked around. “I can’t see her,” he proclaimed “although she was heading in that direction” “That’s the direction she came from before meeting me in the clearing, her house is probably that way” I reasoned. We dusted ourselves off, then hurried in that direction, keeping an eye out for any more killer trees.

Before long, we came across another clearing and, as expected, Old Mother basket’s cottage. Out in front was a garden with a handful of unclothed scarecrows. As we approached, we could see her standing in the doorway. “I’m not in the mood for visitors!” She cautioned. “Why did you feel the need to scry on us?” I shouted back, the jig clearly up at this point, but, even if she was going to respond, any response was cut short by Baldwin firing an arrow at her. It would’ve been a direct hit, but it passed straight through her form, the illusion fizzled and vanished. The door then slammed shut.

We spread out to stay clear of the scarecrows, with me, Baldwin, Neddie and Kia going right and the others going to the left. As we manoeuvered, we heard her screeching from inside the house “Is that horn growing inwards into your brain too, Melech, making you stupider by the second?”. I saw Melech wince, as though the words had actually hurt him. Beiro approached the door and tried to force it open, to no avail, but Melech’s knock spell quickly dealt with it, the sound echoing through the woods. From our viewpoint to the right, we could see Old Mother Basket by the front window, but also by the side window. As we saw her, however, she grinned and both sets of window shutters slammed shut.

I turned to Neddie and Kia, “Come with me around the back, let’s see if we can get in that way”. Before heading off, I put my hand on Baldwin’s shoulder, who was about to make a dash for the front door, said “You’ve got this” and cast Heroism on him. Around the back of the house, I deftly leapt over a crate with no trouble at all and started trying to get through the back door. I could hear the sounds of fighting on the other side, as the others had clearly now all piled in. I left the door to the hirelings and instead started trying to break through the window on the side. Unfortunately, rapiers don’t make particularly good siege weapons, so I made little progress there either.

Suddenly, Old Mother Basket bumped into me. She’d just come through the wall, using yet more trickery to try and escape from her predicament. Upon finding me there though, she looked as surprised as I did and didn’t notice when Baldwin came rushing back out of the front door and clattered his flail right into the top of her head, impacting her skull and knocking her to the floor, lifeless. The hag was dead.

After finding the innkeepers’ scarecrows and Old Mother Basket knowing to find us in the house the morning after we returned, I was starting to suspect something was alerting her to what we were doing. I asked the Satyrs if they had heard of Old Mother Basket, but said her name in a very deliberate, slow fashion, allowing them to stop me if the name was cursed in some fashion. They didn’t stop me but as it turns out knew little of her specifically. I played them a song about what we had learned about Old Mother basket and they brushed it off as a common tale and just not to trust little old ladies in the woods. Perhaps her influence had not spread this far south and these parts of the woods were untouched.

Melech asked whether they knew where we could find the unicorn. “We would be happy to tell a friend,” they said. We all glanced over at Baldwin, who was wearing the crown. He took a moment to realise what was going on, then cottoned on and asked if they’d tell him. One of the Satyrs happily bounced over and started whispering in his ear. I couldn’t make out most of the words, but did hear Baldwin say “I do trust them”. Following the exchange, Baldwin passed on the message that the unicorn was to be found in a sunshine dappled glade to the south, deeper into the woods. We would find it there if it didn’t find us first, but would only appear if we were pure of heart.

It was mid-afternoon by this point and we had a unicorn to find, so we bid farewell to the Satyrs (much to the chagrin of our hirelings) and continued further into the woods. Most of us had been pacing ourselves with the drink, but the hirelings were a little…wobbly. Nevertheless, we carried on through the woods until we noticed a sparkle on the ground. Upon closer inspection it was as though a large sheet of glass had been laid in the woods about ten feet wide and extending out in both directions perpendicular to our current path, carving a path through the woods. Looking along this glassy path, we could see a very large snail in one direction with the most beautiful ornate looking shell, likely the cause of the trail. “That’s a Flail Snail” muttered Melech “their shells are worth a fortune”. “It’s big, I imagine more trouble than it’s worth, at least right now” I pointed out. “Agreed,” said Melech in turn. “Is it’s trail sensitive? can we touch it?”, I queried, but at that point, I heard a light tapping sound behind me. Turning around, Neddie was poking the trail with a stick. No reaction from the snail. “Better safe than sorry,” I said, backed up and took a running jump over it. I think I misjudged the distance because I came down on about the last foot or two of glass with a mighty crunch, shattering the portion beneath my feet. I whipped around. Still no sign of movement from the snail. I breathed a sigh of relief, just as Beiro came careening over the trail as well, just about clearing it. At this point, it seemed pretty obvious we were in the clear, so Baldwin and Melech just wandered over, leading the hirelings, making a slight crunch with every footstep. Baldwin leant down and picked up a shard of glass, examined it briefly, then stashed it in his pouch.

We soon came across a sunshine dappled glade and there, as if waiting for us, was a unicorn. Melech approached first and greeted it. A moment passed and he turned to us “It’s…telepathic, although it doesn’t understand common”. With a prod, Baldwin stepped forward, again wearing the crown, and started talking in Slyvan. “We have been sent by a hag to claim your horn, yet we mean you no harm. These ones have made a deal and we were looking for alternatives to release them from it”. When he finished, he dropped into a thoughtful look, as though acknowledging information. After a couple of moments he turned back to the rest of us “it says the deals are not as rigid as we seem to think, we’re not tied down by anything, only what we believe she can offer us.”

Melech started speaking in elven “Can you give us any guidance on how we might defeat her?”. His expression told me the unicorn had understood this time and was giving its response. Melech related what the unicorn had said “The unicorn is aware of the trouble she’s caused in the Northern woods. She draws her power from trickery like I would draw mine from the weave. She will take any advantage she can get and make elaborate plans to protect herself if she thinks she is in danger.”

“Is she drawing power from the dryad?” I asked as my first question, in Sylvan. “Not…exactly”. A smooth airy voice said in my head “The corruption of the dryad is a symptom, not the cause.” “Can the dryad still be saved?” I asked hopefully. “Unfortunately not, I believe she is too far gone, at this point the best thing for the forest is for her to be destroyed.” The voice said woefully “We were hoping to trick her through the wording of the deal, Do you happen to have like a drinking horn or a French horn you own?” I asked. The unicorn whinied, as though laughing at my question, the voice entered my head again “I’m a unicorn, I have no need for such things, besides where would I keep it?” Fair point.

“Is there some way she could be tracking us?” Melech started asking, seemingly with the same concerns I had had earlier, but then suddenly went pale, as if he’d suddenly realised the answer to his own question. He looked back at the unicorn and then a couple of moments later made a sudden movement towards it. The unicorn disappeared. There was another voice in my head, but it wasn’t the unicorn, it was Melech. “I think we’re being spied on, Old Mother Basket could’ve used your trinket to scry on us.” A lump formed in my throat. I’d been so blind to trying to get information on my mother that I hadn’t even thought the trinket might be used against us. “I…what do we do?” I responded mentally. “Stay as before, don’t let her know that we know and if you want to discuss anything privately, let me know, she shouldn’t be able to scry on these messages.” The message back said. “Is there any way we can know for sure?” Melech paused “I think see invisibility can be used to see scrying orbs, I gave you a scroll for that, didn’t I?”

I perhaps could’ve been more convincing, this was all quite sudden. I cast the spell and started to look around as if trying to see the unicorn through the trees. Nothing, no unicorn and no sign of a scry. I bent down to go through some things in my bag, then I saw it. An ethereal orb, just out the side of my vision, clearly following me. I signalled Melech. “Did you find something?” Came the voice “Yep, there’s some sort of orb following me” I responded in kind. “As suspected, in which case we need to be careful”. We made a vague show of frustration that the unicorn had vanished then made camp in the glade for the evening.

After an uneventful night, we traipsed back to our woodland home to work out what to do next. After pondering things for about 10 minutes, I heard the sound of shattering glass and Baldwin swearing. He’d found a glass ornament from the Fey Friend’s collection that could’ve been modified to look like a unicorn horn, to at least give us a reason to find Old Mother Basket again. On trying to remove the horn looking bit, however, he’d shattered the whole thing. We needed a different excuse. “Look, I think I should go and talk to her, I’ll see whether there’s anything else she’d take instead. If she gets mad it’s only one of us in trouble”. Melech looked a little confused about this sudden suggestion, then slowly started to realise what I might be doing “Yes,” he responded, “it’s worth a try”, then mentally “what’s the plan then?” “I go, as I say, to Old Mother Basket and tell her what happened and ask whether she has any other suggestions or options. Then, instead of staying here, you guys follow about 10 minutes behind. Don’t tell the hirelings what’s really going on until I leave”.

I made my way out of the house, along the river and past both sets of scarecrows, turning off and finding my way to where I was sure Old Mother basket’s cottage was, but…nothing, just an opening in the forest. I stopped, looking around. Either I was mistaken or we’d solved the mystery of the roaming cottage, so now what? I elected to wait and see if she showed up, she’d obviously know I was here. If I turned back I would run into the others and any chance of further chicanery would be out of the window. About ten minutes past and I heard a tussle in the undergrowth. Turning, expecting to see the rest of my party, I breathed a little sigh of relief on seeing Old Mother Basket hobbling out of the woods towards me.

“What are you doing out here on your own dear?” She called out “Oh, I’d come to find you, I thought your house was here though?” I responded sheepishly “Oh no, it’s just a little further along. Now, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?” “I…well, the unicorn got away and I think it knows our intentions, we won’t be able to catch it now.” “Too bad, I guess you’ll need to find another”. She was already seeming less kindly, impatient at whatever I was trying to pull or at the very least our lack of progress in the unicorn matter. “To be honest, I…I’m not sure I could even if we did find another. It’s not in my nature. Is there not some other favour you require?” “I asked for a unicorn horn, are you saying you don’t want to hear about your mother? Are you saying you want to break the deal?” “I…no..I do, I just, isn’t there anything else I could do? Can we not go back to your house to discuss this?” “We shall only meet in the cottage if you have something to offer and that doesn’t seem to be the case” “but…you said we were welcome to come for tea at any time”. At that moment, a twig snapped behind me. Old Mother Basket looked over my shoulder and smiled “Your friends are here”.

I turned. They were spreading out behind me and Baldwin already had an arrow notched. There clearly wasn’t any more chance of parlay. In a flash I drew my rapier and stabbed towards Old Mother Basket, but misjudged the strike from the suddenness of the situation. I backed up and started playing for Baldwin, who then struck true with not one, but two arrows. Old Mother Basket shimmered and her kind old lady exterior vanished, revealing the most reviling of hags, with sagging skin, long bedraggled hair and wiry fingers. Despite taking the arrows, she made a wide toothy grin, reached into a pouch and drew out my two soldiers. I grit my teeth, fully expecting a horrible curse to fell me, with the power of one of my treasured possessions. With a snap, she split it in two and threw the pieces on the ground, took a step back and from the ground grew two full size soldiers, nightmarishly similar to the toy, right down to one missing its head. I actually breathed a sigh of relief at this, as a child I’d had a lot of make-believe fights with these guys (it’s how the head incident happened), time to make those real too. “If I ever do find her, my mum’ll enjoy this story” I thought to myself with a slight grin. Beiro stepped forward to attack them and the hirelings fired a barrage of arrows, landing a handful of hits on the soldiers. Then, with a mutter, a gasp and what I’m sure was a flash of blood, Melech cast a spell I hadn’t seen before. A great explosion engulfed both the soldiers and Old Mother Basket, but Old Mother Basket emerged unscathed, with yet another toothy grin. Her own spells weren’t to be used against her…

Sadly the drinking and dancing had to draw to a close as we needed to continue on and find the unicorn. The satyrs seemed genuinely sad that we had to leave. Before doing so we had another attempt at asking them some questions. This time we had more luck. They had never heard of Old Mother Basket but did give us possible location of a unicorn. They only told us because I was wearing the crown and thus could be considered a friend.

We headed south in search of the glade in which the satyrs had said the unicorn dwelled. A short time later we came across a large glass like trail across our path. Looking up the trail I saw an enormous snail. Melech informed us it was a Flail snail.

I jumped across the trail and pocketed a shard of glass from it. Could be useful at some point… We headed further south and came across the glade the satyrs had described. A unicorn was grazing seemingly unaware of our presence. I approached and spoke to it in Sylvan using the crowns ability. We had a lengthy discussion about the hag and her mission. The unicorn lead us to concluded the hag was probably not actually as powerful as we had assumed and was instead largely relying on trickery and cajolement.

Melech suddenly has an epiphany about Old Mother Basket and via magic message informs us she is probably scrying upon Amafey and by extension the rest of us. It explains how she always seemed one step ahead! We hatch a plan between us using Melechs message ability. We really have no choice but to kill her.

We staged an attempt to kill the unicorn which was actually a cover for Amafey to cast a spell revealing and thus confirming the scry. We would continue to pretend to be doing Mother Basket’s bidding while actually maneuvering in to kill her.

We headed back to the fey friend’s house pretending that we were returning for the night in order to set out again on the morrow to hunt for another unicorn. We openly discussed our predicament with the unicorn to keep Mother Basket misinformed of our true intentions. In morning Amafey, as planned using message headed out alone to find Mother Basket. The idea was for Amafey to distract her with a true but diversionary tale about not wanting to kill a unicorn and seeking a different agreement.

We followed about fifteen minutes behind and approached the spot where Mother Basket’s cottage was meant to be. The cottage was gone but Amafey was there speaking to mother basket. We hadn’t been stealthy enough and Mother Basket spotted us ruining our chances of a surprise attack!

We arrived in Westpine in the late afternoon. We returned the cart we had hired to the carpenter and paid him his dues. We inquired after the tavern keeper and his wife and learned they had locked up and left in the past few days. He said he knew nothing about the reason, but his body language gave away that he was lying.

We headed over to the tavern and found it was indeed locked. Amafey, Melech and I headed around the back and found another door. It was also locked but Melech used one of his spells to open it. We search the tavern thoroughly but find nothing unexpected, though it was obvious they had packed up and left in a hurry.

We decided the best option was to head to the Fey Friend’s “house” even though it would probably be dark before we got there. This turned out to be a bad idea. As we neared the Fey Friend’s house we were beset upon by a swarm of bats. I swung my sword around trying to hit them but to no avail. The hired bandits took the brunt of the biting. The bats with their hunger sated flew off. Beiro, in some kind of crazy, ran off after them. He did return a short while later, proclaiming victory. I wasn’t so sure.

Some of the bandits were quite injured so it took a while longer to get to the house. On the way we saw a new pair of scarecrows. We gave them a wide birth, wanting to avoid further trouble.

I unlocked the front door and we entered. After quick scan around the house I was satisfied nothing was untoward. We ate dinner and then tapped one of the casks of ale. It wasn’t too bad a drink.

It was getting late so I went upstairs to sleep, as did the others. The bandits took the master bedroom between them, but I did managed to nab the bed in the second room.

In the morning I cleared out the larder of all the rotting food. Not a nice job but the smell was beginning to permeate to the rest of the house. As we ate breakfast and discussed our next move we heard a knock at the front door. I run up to the second floor to get a look through the murder holes. It was Mother Basket!

As I arrived back down stairs I found that Melech had let her in and was talking to her in the dinning room. I entered and stood in the corner as Amafey went in the kitchen to make tea. A rather tense conversation was taking place between Mother Basket and Melech. She was blatantly lying. I was tempted to call her out but Melech convinced me otherwise using his magic mind talking.

Amafey returned with tea and conversation turned to the favor owed to her by Amafey and Melech. She wants a horn of a unicorn! What kind of “Mother” is she? I had a very strong urge to slay her where she stood. But what if the others turned on me?

Beiro entered the room and mother basket took this as a cue to abruptly depart. Amafey tried to question her about the scarecrows but she swatted it aside with an obvious lie. Damn her insolence. Melech reworded the question to remove any possible ambiguity but she reaffirmed her statement with a curt response before swiftly departing.

We returned to the new scarecrows we noticed the night before. On closer inspection I noticed they wore the clothes of the missing tavern keeper and his wife. A sorrowful end.

Without any other plan and the vile power of Mother Basket obvious we had no choice but to seek out the unicorn horn. We headed south along the river bank. A short while later we heard the sound of pan pipes. Amafey whipped out her flute and began to play along. We found the source of the music in a clearing. A number of satyrs were joyfully playing and dancing. They greeted us and began handing around wine and ale. Never missing an opportunity for a drink I gladly accepted. An unexpected turn of events! We tried to ask questions of them but quickly gave up. They refused to talk of “dark” things.

Oh well, best get drunk and contemplate slaying a unicorn another time.

Our night on the road passed without incident, as did the next day. The cows near Westpine seemed content, certainly not under imminent attack from griffins when we passed them. We wound our way back to Westpine and as we approached, all seemed how we had left it. I was worried that by the time we came back it would be overgrown with brambles or under siege by orcs, but this was not the case. As we entered Westpine, however, we noticed that the inn, The Moody Cow, was closed and had been shuttered up.

Our first call of business was to return the cart to the carpenter. We could hear the sound of wood being chopped coming from the back of the house, so we brought the cart straight to him and handed over the agreed payment (10 gold pieces! I’m not sure I’m going to trust Baldwin and Melech’s negotiation skills in the future). He didn’t know the whereabouts of the inn’s owners, just that they upped sticks and left a couple of days ago. He said he knew nothing of Old Mother Basket, but there was something strange about his response.

Melech and Baldwin wanted to break into the inn to check for clues and I’ll admit I was also curious. We checked around the back and found another door, also locked. Trying to break in there would draw less attention. I was just about to ask if any of our new hirelings had any lockpicking tools when Melech muttered something and a large knocking sound rang out across the whole village. “It’s unlocked,” he said proudly, as a couple of villagers poked their heads around the corner curiously. We acted nonchalant until any hubbub about the noise died down, then turned the handle and entered.

We found ourselves in the kitchen and it was already clear that anything of importance had been taken and the owners had left in a hurry. A thorough search of the rest of the inn yielded no other clues as to why they left or their next destination.

Regrouping in the square, we discussed where to head next. It was mid-afternoon, so setting up camp in the village and setting off the next day was an option. I suggested we should go south, away from the corruption, in the hope of finding more fairy folk willing to give us information or otherwise aid us in doing something about Old Mother Basket. Baldwin wanted to deal with things directly, get to the house tonight, then find Old Mother Basket in the morning. We agreed to try and make it to the house that night, even if we might have a bit of travel in the dark.

We followed the trail to the hall, then followed the stream to the north again. Night set in when we were still a little way from the house, but we pressed onwards. Suddenly, the sound of wings and chittering filled the air, as a swarm of bats set upon Warwick, who had been right behind me in our marching order. A glance to my left showed a couple more swarms headed in our direction under the cover of darkness. The air was soon filled with the sound of wings, furious swinging of swords and various explosions from Melech’s spells. I used my rapier as a bat skewer but soon noticed that our new hires were struggling in the darkness, unable to see in the dark and unprepared without torches. I took out my flute quickly, started playing and as I did, fired little beads of light out the end, in an attempt to shed some light on the situation. With this, I yelled encouragement to our new friends, it was just a bunch of bats, after all.

We were just starting to thin the ranks of the swarms when they set off into the woods again, either retreating or just bored, I wasn’t really sure. Beiro chased after one swarm, still swinging wildly and disappeared into the woods. Looking around, Melech and Baldwin appeared to be unscathed, although our new friends had not fared so well. Neddie, in particular, looked in fairly bad shape, but he was still standing. Beiro shortly crashed back out of the woods and we decided to push on towards the house. In our haste, however, we almost ran into two scarecrows. Two scarecrows, right by the path, with the same creepy stare as before. A different place though. It might have been dark but this definitely wasn’t where we saw them before. Had they moved, been moved or were they new? We got our answer a few minutes later as we found the original ones a short way further. We skirted around both sets, although Warwick locked eyes with one and froze. He got moving again shortly, but seemed completely fearful, as though the scarecrow had jinxed him somehow. Eventually, we made it to the house, unlocked the door and proceeded inside.

After a rather torrid night, I felt like our hirelings would appreciate a drink and I was interested to try the Fey friend’s beer myself. The kitchen had an ample supply of mugs, so I tapped a cask and spread the beer around. The ex-bandits were sat in awe over the thought that we owned this place and gladly accepted the beer. As expected, the beer was excellent and as we all drunk the previous horrors of the evening faded from mind. We had our dinner and turned in for the night.

Over breakfast, we discussed what to do next. Melech and I were of the opinion to delay, gather information and inspect the dryad before revisiting Old Mother Basket. Baldwin disagreed again, wanting to tackle things head-on. The decision was taken out of our hands though as, at that moment, there was a knock on the door. Baldwin went upstairs to try and spy on who it was, but Melech and I shared a knowing look. “Who is it?” Melech called out, entertaining other possibilities. “It’s me!” Cried our a raspy, slightly withered sounding voice “Old Mother Basket!”. As though it would be anyone else. I went and opened the door. “It’s good to see you!” I said, acting my best to keep up the pretence of friendliness as long as it benefits us, “how did you know we were here?” “Oh, I pay attention to things that happen around here,” she said dismissively, “How come you haven’t come to visit your old mother?” “Oh, we only got back very late last night, we were hoping to come see you today” I replied, genuine this time as even Baldwin hadn’t suggested visiting her last night. I suspect she knew the last bit was a lie though. “Can I get you some tea?” I asked, keen to give myself space to think and interested in gauging how she reacted to being offered tea herself. “That would be lovely” she responded and I proceeded into the kitchen to boil a pot of water, leaving her with Melech and Baldwin, who had just returned from upstairs.

After brewing up some tea with some leaves Melech had provided and finding some cups scattered about the kitchen, I returned to find the situation had soured somewhat. Melech had been trying to grill Old Mother Basket and he was getting impatient about the lack of answers while she was getting impatient about his digging. I set a cup of tea down for her and she gave me a toothy grin, “Right, I’ve decided what the favour you owe me is”. I gritted my teeth, at least we’d know the deal now, but it was unlikely to be good. “I’d like you to get me the horn of a unicorn.” Crap. That was bad on several counts. First, I had no idea where we’d find a unicorn and even if we did, I would have no interest in bringing harm to such a creature. “Do you know where we might find such a creature?” Melech asked, realising she might be sympathetic at least towards the first issue. “Well, I have heard that a unicorn roams deep in the woods to the south, perhaps you should search there”. She might have sensed the trepidation in the air and she reminded us what got us into this mess. “If you get that for me, I might have some information that might interest you about your mother. Alive, might I say. I might even have some information about your origins”, she said towards Beiro as he entered the room and just looked a little lost. She got to her feet slowly, “Well I’ll be off, enjoy your new home” grinning and motioning around the house. “Err, one last thing” I piped up, sensing the opportunity to dig into a new suspicion “Have you seen any more scarecrows popping up?”. She paused, “no, I can’t say I’ve bumped into any” she replied, somewhat carefully and I could see the corners of her mouth curling into a grin. I think Melech saw it too “Yes, but have you SEEN any?” Old Mother Basket rounded on him “I meant what I said” she said abruptly, “now I must bid you good day!” And she shuffled quickly out the door, slamming it behind her with a surprising amount of force for a frail-looking old lady. I sighed with relief at her leaving. At least we knew what we had to do now…
We followed the river back south, along our now well-trodden path, but then continued south upon reaching the hall. If we reached the main river, we should be able to follow that right into the heart of the woods. As we pressed on the woods became thicker, but more luscious. No brambles, no sign of corruption this far south. Perhaps I had worried too much about the rate of its spread, we still had plenty of time to do something about it.

As we headed deeper, the unmistakable sound of pan pipes started filtering through the trees. On instinct, I reached for my own flute and started to play a response in harmony to the original tune. As I started up, the original music paused, likely surprised by the response, but then renewed itself. I struggled to keep up with the fast pace of the exquisite flow of the tune, being far more used to playing on my own. It was getting louder as we approached and I led the rest of the group towards the source of the sound. We came across a small clearing with a handful of satyrs, playing music and dancing. Upon entering the clearing, both I and the playing satyrs bought out music to a crescendo and finished the song.

“That’s some pretty good flute playing there,” one of them said. “Why thank you,” I said, curtsying
slightly, “it’s so nice to hear other music out here in the woods.” “Adventurers!” The others cried, seeing the rest of the party emerge from the trees and as if from nowhere produced full mugs of ale and wine and started handing them around. “Are you not afraid of the corruption in the north?” I asked. “Or seen any Orcs?” Baldwin added “Those are bad things! Drink and be merry instead” one of the satyrs said, handing me a mug of ale. I decided to take their advice, not worry for a bit and enjoy myself and took my turn to tell stories to the group. The atmosphere was infectious and despite being hesitant at first the others all soon joined in on the dancing and revelry. “See? This adventuring lark isn’t all bad!” I yelled at Neddie and his crew, still looking out of their depth out here in the wilds. It certainly made a change of pace and it felt like the best idea just to sing and dance and drink forever and not worry about Old Mother Basket or the forest dryad or Orcs ever again…

After acquiring a new shield, longbow and some supplies I headed to the barracks to speak to Harvey Springman. He was however not much help. He couldn’t provide me with any information about the fall of Norcragden nor was he interested in helping out with the bandit issue. Not much of a “Captain of the guard”. I wouldn’t want to be in Coombesgate if it ever got attacked.

I head back to the Fallow Sow and settle down to an afternoon of playing cards and drinking. I managed to win a few games but the winnings were hardly worth writing home about. Beiro was also around, keeping to himself as usual.

In the evening Amafey arrived back at the Tavern for her performance. I noticed Smordin was now in the Tavern and headed over to talk to him about getting a sword made in exchange for the master work token. Beiro followed me over and between us we agreed to get a longsword made and that it would take around 10 days. I mentioned that I was also an aspiring blacksmith. Smordin seemed somewhat amused by this, I guess he didn’t think I would be any kind of competition. Anyway it’s not if I had the tools and more coin can be made by fighting these days. Smordin mentioned that Melech had wished him to translate some of Dwarven writing he had. As he didn’t seem to be about I offered to go get him.

After collecting Melech from upstairs we headed back towards Smordin’s table. Some of the stewards men were trying to curry favor with him. Presumably they wanted new weapons. Melech’s presence seemed to upset them somewhat. harsh words were exchanged and I half thought I would have to bash some heads in. Smordin however managed to deescalate the situation by stating he wound’t make weapons for any of the men if they caused Melech harm. The marched off and left us alone.

Not that interested in Dwarven fairy stuff I went back to drinking. It certainly was getting crowded it seemed Amafey was on top form tonight. Just after midnight I headed up to bed.

The next day we woke early and deliberated about what to do with the day ahead. I acquiesced to Amafey plan, I didn’t really have my own after all. Amafey and I first disguised ourselves before heading to the Notched Blade tavern. I wasn’t convinced of the need but it couldn’t hurt.

We got to the tavern and found the bandits. After a short exchange we convinced them to follow us back to the square where Beiro and Melech were waiting. We revealed who we were, they seemed genuinely surprised. Obviously not the most observant bunch. Introductions were made and a discussion ensued. After eliminating other options it was decided we would hire them as extra swords. I objected but was out voted by the rest of the group. I would have to keep a close eye on them.

We bought the required extra tents and supplies, loaded up the cart and set off back to Westpine. I was at the back of the group expecting them to turn on us once out the city. However the journey was uneventful and we made camp at the nightfall. The following morning we continued on to Westpine.

I left Melech in the library as there were a few things I needed to do around town before the evening’s performance. I restocked on my dwindling ration supply and picked up a healing kit to try and avoid any more close calls. Baldwin had passed his old short bow onto me, as he was getting an upgrade, so I also picked up a quiver and a bundle of arrows. After being rudely turned away from using the barracks for some archery training, I returned back to Melech in the library.

“Did you dig up anything else?” I whispered, finding him towards the back hidden by a couple of towers of books. “Yes, actually” he responded happily, obviously at home here. “I decided to look up some past orc invasions and see whether the matching war paint has come up before. Well, it has, typically whenever there’s a particularly strong war chief, other orcs will rally under them, copy their war paint and follow under their rule. I think the same thing is happening again, hence why the orcs seem so organised.” I nodded, agreeing with the conclusion, then smiled wryly. “I think you mean orc-anised”. Melech just glared at me. “Anyway, come on!” I started, poking his shoulder, “Smokey’s queue is getting a lot shorter and I thought you wanted those notes translated.” Melech’s eyes lit up, “Oh, yes!”, he put down the book and followed me.

We found Smordin in the square with a handful of the steward’s men still queueing to get their swords sharpened. We queued up behind them, but it wasn’t long before Smordin spotted us and beckoned up forwards. “Good to see you lass! what do you need?” The soldier whose sword was next looked a bit disgruntled about having been queue jumped. “Well, we were hoping to bump into the others while we were waiting, as I imagine one of them will make the best use of your master work, but I’d like a couple of daggers if you’ve got any spare” “Sure, sure, I’ll see what I can find. You’re not getting these for free too mind” he chuckled. “Oh I wouldn’t think of paying anything other than full price for your handiwork” I beamed back. “I also have some notes in dwarven I was hoping you might be able to help with” Melech added, passing over one of the sheets of notes. Smordin took a glance at it while rummaging in his cart “I’m a bit busy at the moment to play translator, but…” he flipped the page upside-down and squinted slightly “come find me in the inn later, buy me a drink and I’ll see what I can do” he said, handing the page back. “Here we are!” Smokey exclaimed, pulling two daggers out and handing them over. “That’ll be 10 gold pieces”. I handed the money over, Melech and I both thanked him and headed back to the inn for the evening.

That evening’s performance was one of my best ever. Building on the strength of my previous performance at The Fallow Sow, I mixed old and new, fast and slow. I debuted “When last we left our heroes”, an improv storytelling exercise, which went down fantastically. I made sure my friends and I were all supplied with food and drink and a very enjoyable night of revelry was had by all.

We reconvened bright and early the next day over breakfast in the inn. It seems none of us had overdone it too much the night before. “I was going to go and collect those bandits from the Notched Blade before we go to Westpine” I proposed. “We should all go”. Melech said authoritatively. I countered, having already thought through this “Actually, I was hoping to go alone, disguise myself, just make sure we’re not being led into a trap. The fewer of us the better, as we’re all quite recognisable”, my gaze resting on Melech’s horns. I was also aware my golden eyes stood out like a sore thumb in more human areas too. “I still think I should come, it’s a bit of a rough area” Baldwin offered. I thought for a moment “As an old guard around here, they’re probably most likely to recognise you, although…if I did something about that scar with my disguise kit it would probably do most of the work of covering you up.” Baldwin agreed to my ‘changes’ and we set off towards The Notched Blade

Baldwin led the way, knowing his way around town. As we continued through the streets, I could see the houses getting smaller, more stacked on top of each other, leading to almost slums, people creating living space in any nook and cranny. The smell was getting worse too. We soon found The Notched Blade crammed between two other buildings and I could see why Drebky had warned us away from coming here. It was pretty much the definition of the word shady. I made sure my hood was pulled over my face as much as possible, nodded at Baldwin and we proceeded inside.

The inn was dark. Even mid-morning when it was bright outside, very little of the natural light filtered through. There was a grubby bar with an innkeeper, a small group that I immediately noticed were the bandits I’d asked to meet us here and otherwise it was empty. I guess even in a place like this, few people would be drinking quite so early. I pointed out the group to Baldwin and shuffled over.

Making my way over to the group, I prepared my best street urchin voice. “‘Ello there lads, I don’t suppose a lively group of adventurers asked you to meet them here”. They looked up “Maybe,” the one who had appeared to be the leader before shrugged, “what’s it to you?” “Well, they sent me to come pick you up, they’re waiting in the central square”. They looked surprised “they said they were going to meet us here”. “Change of plans,” I said, not thinking of anything better on the spot. The leader gave a bit of a shrug “Well, no point waiting around here all day. C’mon you lot”

We made our way back to the main square, with me leading the way, but Baldwin shuffling around at the back. I was aware he wasn’t giving these ex-bandits an inch and wanted to keep an eye on both our backs. “They hiring you too, then?” one of them asked me. “Oh, no, just gave me a couple o’ coin to come get you” I replied, keeping up the illusion for the time being. “They seem to be pretty liberal with their coin, I guess that’s a good sign for us” one of them reasoned. We found Melech and Beiro as agreed in the square, greeted them, then removed my cloak and smeared some of the make-up off my face, revealing my true identity to them. They looked genuinely shocked. “Sorry about that,” I said, returning to my normal voice with a cough “we just wanted to make sure we weren’t walking into a trap. That inn would be your kind of territory after all”

I introduced myself fully and then went around introducing the individual members of the group. After a couple of awkward stares at Melech, the leader went round and introduced the bunch of ex-bandits. His name was Neddie the Knuckles, the one with an eyepatch was called One-Eyed Dennis, another had a great big bushy beard and was known as Silent Gregory, the shadiest of the bunch was Cheating Warwick and the sole female of the group, a fairly burly lass, was known as Kya Black-Eye.

Introductions aside, we discussed our options. They weren’t open to going North to battle the orcs, accurately pointing out they could’ve done that already if they felt like getting promptly squished. They were also unwilling to turn on their own allies and take down the main bandit camp they had come from original, making a point of not wanting to stab their friends in the back. I’m not sure whether this is good or bad for us, not wanting to turn on other bandits, but hopefully not wanting to stab us in the back either?

This left the option of them accompanying us back to Westpine and the Fey Woods. “If we’re travelling we’ll need a tent. And food!” Neddie pointed out. Rations tend to cost us five silver pieces a day, meaning this would pretty much double the cost. I heard a voice in my head, “This deal is getting worse” Melech’s message said. I turned back to the bandits, realising this was an opportunity to renegotiate “How about 3 silver pieces each per day and we masked sure you get fed”. This seemed agreeable. “And what about the tents?" Melech pointed out “Lighten up, the situation is just two tents,” I said with a big grin. Melech sighed. It didn’t take long to buy what we needed and we set off back towards Westpine

Our journey was peaceful and without incident. No new bandits had set up in the copse yet and the skies seemed clear. Talking to the ex-bandits it sounded like they had taken to stealing from falling on bad times, struggling to find any other way to survive and put food on the table. They were all pretty young, I imagine most don’t last long in their old line of work.

As we set up camp for the night, it was quickly obvious they didn’t know what to do with the tent. Baldwin and I helped out, while Beiro scavenged some last bits and pieces for dinner. We’d realised he should be able to cover for himself and our hirelings, which should keep the costs down, although the rest of us would have to keep up our ration stocks for now. We turned in for the night, agreeing to pair up with one member of each party for each watch.

“What…err…how?” I stammered, trying to choose between all the questions I felt I needed to ask the innkeeper. “How long have you known about her?”. A vague timeline was starting to form in my head, I suspect old mother basket only moved into the forest after the Fey Friend’s demise. The innkeeper looked over at his wife who was now shaking her head furiously. “I…I’ve said too much. You should leave. You’re not welcome here anymore”. Realising that it was likely their own safety was in danger if they told me any more, I nodded reluctantly and left the three gold I had previously offered him. Beiro followed, but not before uttering his newfound catchphrase of “I’ll be back”, more confusing the innkeeper than anything else.

Back in the centre of Westpine, we met back up with Baldwin and Melech, who had acquired a cart from the lumberjack for a daily fee. We agreed between ourselves that we were likely to be five days. The rest of the current day and the next travelling to Coombesgate, a full day in Coombegate to do all that we needed to do and two days travel back to Westpine. We put the painting into the cart and set off down the road.

A couple of hours into our trip back to Coombesgate, I happened to look up at the sky and saw two figures that appeared to be heading in our direction. I nudged Baldwin, “Do you think those are birds?” Baldwin squinted “Not sure, they’re a little way off, but they’re definitely headed this way” he responded, his hand reaching for his sword. I could see Melech getting uneasy too, his hand reaching into his robe. A low rumbling sound had started to our side and glancing over I could see a herd of cows shuffling quickly towards the treeline. “Quick!” I hissed, “Get into the trees”. The others set off at a dash towards the trees as I took a moment to cast the illusion of a large rabbit and I then pursued the others. After peeking out from the trees for a handful of seconds, we saw a figure swoop down and try to grab the illusory rabbit with a frustrated eagle cry when it found nothing. It’s big lion-like legs kicked off from the ground and took flight once again. Gryphons. Unusual to see this far south, they normally roost in mountains. We came out of the trees slightly to see them both heading off northwards, the other one with a cow in its talons. We carried along the road with one eye on the skies, but the rest of the day passed without incident.

The next day, we decided to try and make it the rest of the way to Coombesgate, although that would likely involve travelling into the night a little. We were also to pass through the copse where we were attacked by bandits before. We slowed and kept our eyes especially peeled and, sure enough, we saw signs of another impending ambush. Melech and I crept into the undergrowth on the sides, hoping to get the jump on our would-be attackers, although we weren’t as well hidden as we thought. One of the archers I was approaching spotted me, but I think he recognised me from before. “bugger this for a laugh,” he yelled, holding his bow above his head. A new leader had stepped out of the ferns by Beiro and Baldwin (who’d continued down the path) and we could see three other archers, in the same arrangement they had attacked us the few days before, all pop-up and look a bit confused. “Give it up boss, these ones aren’t worth the trouble” the one who had already surrendered yelled. The leader sneered at us “You can pass…THIS time” he said, trying to appear generous, but there was a hint of fear in his voice. Melech and I retrieved ourselves from the bushes and followed after Beiro and Baldwin, who had now passed the leader.

As I passed the leader, however, I turned to him. These guys would be attacking pretty much anyone travelling along this route, ourselves included, and we needed to do something to get rid of them “What are you doing with your life?” I said blankly. He looked taken aback, surprised by the question, but before he could respond I continued “would you be willing to work as mercenaries if we paid you?”. A voice crept into the back of my head “What are you doing?”, I looked over and saw Melech glaring at me, but I just winked at him. “Err…yeah, how much you offering?” the bandit said gruffly. “How much is fair pay?” I countered. “Err…five silver pieces a day,” he said. “That’s fair” I responded, “Each!” he said, somewhat triumphantly. I smiled “I assumed as much”. I paused, thinking how best we could use them, primarily to keep them from any more raiding. “If I were to give you 50 silver now, where would I be able to find you in two days?” I offered, off the road was better than nothing for the moment. “Well, I guess we’ll be in the tavern,” he said with a shrug. “Which tavern would that be?” “Well, the Notched Blade of course!” Not one I knew, but I’m sure I can find it, although the name alone gave me a rough idea of what I might find there. “And you’d stay off the road in the meantime?” I probed. “Well, we ain’t going back if you’re paying us.” he chuckled. I paused, of course, these guys were coming from somewhere “Back where?” I asked tentatively, knowing that the rest of a bandit camp might be harder to deal with. “Back to the boss. He gives us our jobs, posts us on the roads. Sometimes it’s the north or south ones leading out of Coombesgate, but it’s normally this one.” “How many of you are there at the camp?” I asked, he seemed to be very free with information and I was going to take advantage of this. “About twenty in total, including us.” I nodded “ok”. Reaching for my coin purse, I retrieved 50 silver and handed it over “I’ll see you in The Notched Blade in two days and there’ll be more where that came from”. As we all walked away, we could hear them all squabbling over the coin behind us.

We arrived at Coombesgate shortly after nightfall to find the gates closed, but after a short talk to the guards, Baldwin got us in. We made our way straight to The Fallow Sow to get rooms for the night, hoping my last performance there would give us the chance to stay with only the need to play tomorrow. Baldwin and Beiro stayed outside to watch the cart while Melech and I went inside to get the rooms. “Amafey!” I heard shouted cheerily from the bar as I went in “Well if it isn’t my favourite bard!” There was a twang from the current performer as he missed a note. I smiled widely and walked over “Hello again, err… I’m sorry, I never actually got your name last time” I said sheepishly “Ooo, don’t worry about it, busy times and all. It’s Drebky by the way” he responded with a grin. “Well, Drebky, I was hoping you had a few rooms available for me and my friends in exchange for a full performance tomorrow evening” “Oh, of course, play like you did before and that’s more than ok” he said, slightly stary eyed at the prospect of how full the bar would be again. “Is it possible to get four rooms?” I queried. “Err…yeah…actually, one moment.” and he walked back and yelled into one of the back rooms “Ma! Have we got four rooms spare?” The voice of an older woman rasped back “No!” “Err, how many have we got spare?” “Two!” He came back to the bar a little embarrassed, “Only got two rooms I’m afraid, is that ok?” “Oh that’ll be fine” It’s still a freebie, we could probably just about cram into one room if needs be. He handed me two keys I thanked him “I’ll make sure to put on a good performance tomorrow” and winked at the barkeeper.

As I turned to gather the others, I found Melech engaged in conversation with a familiar dwarf. “Smokey!” I exclaimed. He turned to me and beamed “Amafey! Good to see you returned ok, holding up well?” “Yes, yes” I responded “We had quite an adventure, but we’re all in one piece. How about you, no trouble from any bandits?” “Nope, no trouble” “You didn’t encounter any?” “Oh I encountered them, they didn’t cause me any trouble though” and he winked. “Join me for a drink, I want to hear all about your stories” Melech and I agreed, just as soon as we’d brought our stuff into the inn. Baldwin offered to stay to guard the painting, although I think he just wanted some time to himself. We exchanged stories with Smokey for most of the night, agreeing to leave the various bits of business we had to the following day.

I went to order more drinks and while the barman was pouring them, I realised I never asked about my mother around here. “Does the name Lafrey Brightwood sounds familiar to you? She’s a performer, like myself.” “Lafrey, Lafrey”, Drebky pondered, “Y’know, I think I do remember someone by that name when I was a child. In here occasionally. She was one of my father’s favourites. She was very good, not quite as good as you, mind.” “I…err…thank you. I was hoping to follow in her footsteps” I said shyly, blushing deeply. “Well, I think you’ve already surpassed her,” he said, passing me the mug of ale. I looked down into it, quietly said thank you again and hurried back to the others.

I only made it halfway before starting to shed tears. Everything was getting too much. However well I was doing, my mother wasn’t around to see it, I wasn’t able to make her proud. All I was doing asking around was reminding myself she hasn’t been seen in years and I’m unlikely to ever see her again. My only lead so far was from an old woman who, as time goes on, seems to be transpiring to be an evil hag.

By the time I made it to the table, I was clearly a mess. “You alright, lass?” Smokey asked tentatively “Yeah, I…I’m just poking too much into information about my mother” “Ooooooook, well I think it’s about time for bed”, clearly not wanting to be part of my breakdown. Beiro and Melech looked at a loss for what to do too and we sat there pretty much in silence until I finished my beer and went to bed.

In the morning we headed straight over to the baron’s residence. We knocked on the door and the peephole slid open revealing a pair“Yes?” A voice attached to the eyes said. Melech stepped forwards, “We’re here to see the baron, we have something he’d like to see,” he said authoritatively. “Do you have an appointment?” The voice said, tinged with disdain. “He is expecting us” There was a sigh “I can’t just let anyone in, the Baron is a very busy man” “And he’ll be even busier berating you if you don’t let him know we’ve got what he’s looking for.” There was a pause, then with a sigh, the voice responded: “I will check with the baron” and the peephole slid closed. It was at this point that I had a minor revelation “We need a team name!” Melech looked at me incredulously. I continued “If we need to tell people who we are, what would we say at the moment? We could all introduce ourselves if the situation suits but we need something snappy!”. Melech just shook his head and turned around. At this point, the door opened and a body that we presume belonged to the voice we heard appeared. “The Baron will see you now,” he said.

As we entered the main hall where we had had the feast the week before, the Baron came out and greeted us. “Greetings, good to see you’ve all returned! Is that it, can I see it?”. Melech and Baldwin started to unroll it but as they did I piped up “It wasn’t to be found in the hall you directed us to, we faced many other trials and tribulations in order to retrieve it. I was hoping you might be able to increase the compensation in kind?” The baron looked slightly taken aback “The reward was for the painting, not the effort to retrieve it. You knew the pointer was nothing more than a tip-off and you accepted the quest” “Fair enough” I said, backing off quickly. It had been an optimistic question and I didn’t want to leave with nothing. The others had now unfurled the painting and the Baron stood back and admired it. “This is even better than I imaged! Look! There’s Uster and gasp that’s Taelakir” he nudged Beiro in the ribs “I’m part elf you know”. I could see Beiro glancing up and down the Baron’s portly body, then nod cautiously.

At that moment a man came running in. “Sir, I have urgent news,” he said, breathlessly. The baron turned to us “Excuse me, this is terribly rude, but I have to take this and he and the man went into the next room. As he was away, a couple of servants arrived and started rolling up the painting. I asked about making sure we were going to be paid before letting the painting out of our sight and the servants assured us our payment would here shortly. Just after the servants left with the painting the baron returned. “Oh, have they taken it?” he said, disappointed. We nodded “Oh well, we’ll get it framed and on display before long and ..ah, here’s your reward” and sure enough, at that moment a servant appeared with a big coffer filled with gold. We hefted it into the cart for the time being. “Now, if you don’t mind…” the baron started but was cut off of by Baldwin. “Orcs. We saw some in the Fey woods, organised ones, all with the same markings” he said, knowing this was something the baron needed to hear “Oh” the baron said, only seeming a little surprised “Is everything Ok?” I probed. “Yes, I…well..” He stuttered but quickly regained his focus “I suppose I can confide in you strapping bunch of adventurers. Norcragden has fallen. They orcs are currently held back at the river crossing. “Are you looking for more soldiers?” I asked, thinking about the bandits “can you pay them?” “We can’t really afford that, although any militia that joins the front lines would be more than welcome. Don’t worry, the steward’s men will hold the orcs back”. He seemed pretty confident of this.

Following our meeting with the baron, we distributed the reward and split up, agreeing to meet back at the tavern later. Beiro and Baldwin wanted to go shopping, but I took the opportunity to grab Melech. I’d been wanting to see if the library had any information on hags or anything else to build on what we’ve learned. Melech agreed this was a good idea and we both made our way over. Between us, it didn’t take long to turn up a handful of stories referring to hags. In pretty much all cases they were brokers of deals, much like Old Mother Basket. Unfortunately, in most of the deals we read about, the other party didn’t come off so well…

Melech and I met up with Amafey and Beiro outside the Moody Cow. We loaded the painting in the cart and set off along the road back to Coombesgate. A short way out of the village we noticed a pair of Griffins flying overhead. The cows nearby also noticed and began to run for cover. We decided to follow and headed towards the nearest coppice of trees. We managed to get to safety, however one of the cows was not so lucky. It screamed out as one of the Griffins grabbed it flying off into the sky. That might explain how the local farmers cows have been going missing!

We cautiously left the coppice before continuing along the road. The rest of the day was uneventful and when night fell we set up camp. The following morning we were off again hoping to reach Coombesgate before nightfall.

In the afternoon we approached the wooded area where we had been attached by bandits before. We didn’t want it to happen again so it was decided that Amafey and Melech would scout along the edges while me and Beiro continued along the road.

As I dragged the cart cautiously up the road I saw some branches in the nearby trees twitch. Our suspicions were confirmed as Amafey came across one of the bandits hiding amongst the trees. At least one of bandits seemed to recognise us from before and called out that we were not be attacked. Presumably remembering their defeat at our hands before. I took this as a cue and hastily continued up the road past the bandits.

Amafey however seemed to be discussing some kind of proposition with the bandits. I waited for sometime up the road fretting about wanting to get to Coombesgate before dark. It didn’t seem very likely now…

After Amafey eventually finished it was indeed dark before we arrived at Coombesgate. Normally entry after dark is restricted but by a stroke of luck I knew the gate guard from my time up at Norcragden. He let us in and we headed to the Fallow Sow tavern. I guarded the cart and painting while the others organised the rooms. We stowed the painting and equipment in one of the rooms. I guarded it while the others went down for a drink. Not worth risking the painting now, someone else might have overheard something about it.

The next day we headed to the Baron’s residence with the painting. Initially they were reluctant to let us in or even inform the baron of our arrival. However after some persuading we were let in to greet the baron. He took us into a room off the main hall where we presented him with the painting.

While we waiting for our payment we discussed with the baron what we had seen the Fey Woods. He seemed concerned, especially about the orcs but it was clear there was something else on his mind. He revealed to us that Norcragden had fallen to a coordinated Orc attack. The Stewards men were clearly not up to scratch… We informed the baron that we would be in Coombesgate at least for a couple of days and proceeded back to the tavern with our hard earned coin.

We divvied it up the 400 gold between us. I had wanted to divide the rest of the coin and loot we had gained but Melech wanted to keep it together for now. A discussion for another time. With my new earned coin I set off to the shops to restock on essentials and get a much needed shield.

We continued upstairs entering the landing again and started searching the rooms off of it. The first room contained a number of casks labelled in dwarven. After checking the casks over we determine they probably contained beer or ale. This suspicion was confirmed after finding a cask tap. Though the others and I rather relished the idea of tapping one we decided it was best to continue searching the rest of the house first.

We entered the next room which was full of bookshelves. Melech excitedly entered the room and began rummaging through the books. I followed him in and began to look around the room myself. As I got to the end of one of the shelves a force struck me flinging me across the room into a wall. I drew my sword and charged towards were I had been attacked. I slashed out at were I thought the enemy might be but my blade sailed harmlessly through the air.

Amafey cast a spell and the outline of short figure appeared in front of me. Maybe the ghost of the house’s owner? Possibly the Fey Friend? Amafey obviously had the same idea and began trying to persuaded the potential Fey Friend we meant no harm and wanted to talk. I moved to back up from the ghost, as I did it struck out but in a rather lackadaisical manner, missing entirely. As I got to a safer distance I pulled the crown from my bag and put it on. I used its ability to speak sylvan and attempted to reassure the ghost we were here to help.

It let out a wail and flew up disappearing through the ceiling. We ran back to the landing, up the stairs and began searching for it. In the main bedroom we found the skeleton of a dwarf. Evidently he had been dead for some time. Amafey called out to the Fey Friend and we heard a knocking coming from a dressing table in the corner.

We were able to communicate with the ghost of the fey friend using a single knock for yes and two knocks for no. This limited us to simple yes or no questions. Through quite a number of questions we were able to determine a number of things: The ghost was indeed the Fey Friend; he had died of natural causes; he wanted a proper burial; he wanted us to deal with corruption in the forest but was unsure of the cause himself; there were no more traps left in the house; we were free to take the painting and use the house as a base of operation.

Beiro and I wrapped the Fey Friend’s skeleton in some sheets before carrying it out to the edge of the woods behind the house. Beiro and I dug a hole while Amafey sourced rocks to cover the grave with. After a couple of hours we had completed the task and returned to keep.

A thorough search of the house had found a considerable sum of coin, some health potions and the key to the front door. I locked the front door before retiring to the second floor to sleep. It was rather late at this point.

In the morning over breakfast Melech informed us he had deciphered a recipe from Mother Basket’s book. It was for a tea that when willingly drunk takes one year of life off the drinker and gifts it to the brewer. I had drunk her tea! Anger welled up in me and I vowed to kill her if I came across her again. For now however we should stick to the task at hand and get the painting back to the Barron.

We removed the painting from the frame and wrapped it some sheets. Amafey and Melech carried the painting between the two of them and we set of back to Westpine. I made sure to lock the door on my way out and kept the key upon my person.

We arrived in Westpine at around lunchtime. Melech seemed particularly tired out by having to carry the painting and suggested we find a cart to make it easier. So we headed to the Moody Cow for some refreshments and to inquire after a cart.

The innkeeper seemed rather shocked to see us. Amafey noticed that the innkeeper’s wife, who was also present, was no longer pregnant and asked after the baby. The innkeeper stated the baby was fine, Amafey however was unconvinced and began aggressively questioning the fellow. Soon Melech joined in and started accusing him of hiding something. My pleas to leave the man alone fell on deaf ears. The innkeeper demanded that we leave. I acknowledged his request and made my way out of the inn in search of a cart. After all the man’s baby was his own concern I didn’t want interfere.

Melech followed me out and we made our way over to the lumberjacks house. The innkeeper had said Steve the lumberjack had a cart. I approached the front door and knocked. A rather gruff man answered the door, presumably Steve. He rejected my request to borrow his cart, insisting he needed it for his job before promptly terminating the conversation by shutting the door. A tad rude I thought but his point about needing it for work did seem valid.

Melech however did not want to take no for answer. Maybe still aching from having to carry the painting earlier. He knocked on the door again and noticeably more grumpy Steve answered. With an offer of coin and a somewhat intimidating tone Melech managed to convince him to rent us his cart.

As we proceeded through the first floor of the keep, we came across a room full of crates and barrels. My allies’ first reaction was to make sure none of it was animated, hitting it with their staffs and swords before examining more carefully. The barrels appeared to be labelled with a dwarven script and made a glug sound when tilted. Ale! And probably high-quality dwarven stuff at that! I pointed this out and immediately joined the others in searching for a tap. I found one quickly but then paused. “as much as I’d love the idea of drinking some of this now, we do want to explore the rest of this on a clear head“ I sighed. Baldwin, also caught up in the mild excitement this had brought on, slowly nodded and we all filed out of the storeroom.

The next room we tried appeared to be some kind of library, with bookshelves lined with scrolls and the like “More dwarven script!” Melech called out, rifling through what was to hand. I stuck by the door, still cautious of any other magical traps and felt thoroughly vilified in this when Baldwin was thrown 30 feet across the room by some invisible force. He started back, swinging wildly at thin air but not gaining any purchase. Having ‘seen’ our mysterious attacker earlier in the day, however, I was prepared and cast faerie fire covering the corner of the room he was flung from. The sparkles fell and as they did so, outlined a humanoid figure shorter than myself, otherwise invisible, in the corner.

“Fey Friend!” I called out, jumping to some justifiable conclusions, the dwarven ghost being the previous owner of this building. “We mean you no harm! We think something happened here and want to help!” The ghost’s demeanour seemed to flicker, potentially shifting slightly to calmness and remorse, at least as much as I could tell from the faerie fire’s outline. “We just want to talk, we’re not here to steal anything!” Melech yelled from the other side of the bookcase. Baldwin backed away and the ghost lashed out in response, but almost absentmindedly at this point. Baldwin retrieved the forest queen’s crown from his satchel and put it on. Speaking sylvan, he spoke clearly “We’re friends of the Fey” and picking up on his lead I followed “Something has happened to the forest dryad, we want to help” also in Sylvan. The ghost’s aggression faded entirely and he started letting out an almost banshee-like howl and the swept upwards through the ceiling.

We turned for the stairs, “quick!” I yelled, “I can’t maintain the spell for long, we’ll lose sight of him if it fades!”. Heading up the stairs and quickly rushing through the array of rooms upstairs, we found two bedrooms, one of which contained a skeleton, and a study, but no other traps or sign of the ghost. Happy we’d seen every room, I called out again “Fey friend?! Are you here? We were hoping you might be able to help us help the forest?”. There was a bump from the master bedroom as the dressing table hoped up briefly. I headed back into the room and cautiously approached the table. Running my hand along the edge of the table, I whispered “Fey Friend, is that you? Knock once for yes”. One knock in response. I breathed a sigh of relief. We had found him and he seemed calm enough to converse. This was truly a unique opportunity.

“I…we want to know what happened here. Did you die of natural causes?” One knock, yes. No foul play it seems. “Dare I say, broken heart?” The other bedroom had been unused for far longer than any part of the keep. Two knocks in response. Ok, that wasn’t it. Changing tack, I asked, “Do you want us to help the forest?” One very clear knock in response. Melech came across “Look, we just want to check. Are there any more magical traps in the house”. A pause, eventually followed by two knocks. Thinking about my options for getting answers in this limited form of communication I asked if the hag and the dryad are responsible for the state of the forest. Three knocks. Either maybe or they don’t know. Most likely the trouble with the hag only kicked off after his death. “Have you been dead for more than a couple of months?” Yes “A couple of years?” No. Ok, that gives us a rough idea of when he died

“Do you want a proper burial?” Baldwin asked as we all started to crowd the table. One knock “be properly put to rest?” one knock again. Melech cut to the chase “Do you have any particular attachment to that painting?” he asked. A long pause. Eventually, there were two knocks and I could hear Melech and Baldwin exhale in relief. It’s been a while since the painting was my primary interest and I was here for writing inspiration more than anything in the first place, but it sounded like the others would be glad to finish this quest. I just hope that I can persuade them to come back to help deal with the forest. Possibly looking for an excuse to come back, Baldwin asked if we could use the keep as a base of operation. Another pause as a sense of impatience or anxiety filled the air. Then, one knock. We had the ghost’s permission to have the run of the place. Realising we should probably wrap this up while we still could, I asked if the dwarf had any special burial requests, any dwarven customs to follow? After a moment of consideration came two knocks “Ok, we will make sure you’re buried properly” and the others started towards the bed to retrieve the body. “Umm, one last thing?” I stammered carefully “we found what I’m fairly sure was your ale supply downstairs” A knock interrupted me “and, well, I know dwarven ale is of very fine quality. I don’t suppose we’d be able to have some?” With almost a sigh, the table knocked one last time. “Thankyouverymuch” I gushed “I will make sure you’re buried with the utmost respect”

Finishing our seance, we respectfully wrapped up the skeleton in the bedsheets and Baldwin and Beiro carried it downstairs, out of the house and to the glade at the rear of the house. I found some stones of various sizes from the riverbank and built a cairn by the grave. Leaving Beiro and Baldwin to their hole digging, I started searching the house for anything else of interest, turning up a sizeable amount of gold and a couple of health potions. Beiro and Baldwin finished burying the Fey Friend and as they came back into the keep it was as though a shadow had been lifted from the place. The search had also turned up the front door key, so we spent a night asleep on the top floor without any worries.

The next morning, Melech had an announcement “I’ve been reading that book Old Mother Basket gave me and I’ve found a recipe that’s might interest you. It’s for a tea, that, when ingested willingly, takes a year off the life of the drinker and gives it to the provider of the tea” “Ah,” I said, seeing what he was implying, exchanging a glance with Baldwin who suddenly looked a bit ill. “Next time we see her, maybe don’t drink the tea?” Melech suggested, smugly, as he hadn’t partaken the time before. “Well…”, I said slowly “if that’s what it takes to get more information, I can give up a couple more years”. I glanced over at Baldwin “At least I’m half elf, I had a few more to start with” I chuckled nervously. “We need to kill her,” Baldwin said. “I was just joking, sorry!” I said, only half seriously as I knew he was referring to Old Mother Basket. “Look,” Melech said “she’s tricking you and there’s some other part of the deal you don’t even know about. She’s getting the years for free” “I get what you’re saying” I responded “no more freebies, at the very least”

We turned our attention at last to the painting, ready to take it back to Baron Ramsgate. We were now all eager to get back to Coombesgate before dealing with the forest, wanting to resupply with equipment and information. The painting was huge, from floor to ceiling. Maybe ten foot by six foot and framed too, the canvas alone would probably take two of us to carry it. After carefully trying to manipulate it amongst ourselves, we got the painting clear of the frame, although the heavy staples that had kept it in place left their mark, and wrapped it up in the sheets from the other bed. With everything ready, we set off back downstream towards Westpine.

Surprisingly, we made it all the way back to Westpine without any surprises. Not being interrupted every half an hour or so meant the trip only really lasted us the morning and we arrived in Westpine at about lunchtime. “We can’t keep carrying the painting like this” huffed Melech, who had been helping me carry it, “We should see if we can borrow a cart from someone”. I nodded “The innkeeper at the Moody Cow might know who has one. I wanted to ask him a few questions anyway”

As we headed into the Moody Cow, I greeted the bartender warmly, but he did a double take, as though he’d seen a ghost. “You…you’re back?!” He stammered. “Well, of course, it wasn’t all happiness and roses, but nothing a dashing young group of adventurers like us couldn’t handle” I responded, with a grin. “Ah, err, well, can I get you anything?” “Ah yes, of course” I checked quickly with the others “A jug of wine between us I believe” and slipped him ten coppers and a silver.

As he retrieved the wine from behind the bar, I looked over and saw his wife sitting in her corner, no longer pregnant “Oh, has the baby arrived, birth all ok I hope?” “Oh yes, yes,” said the innkeeper. “Baby all well?” I followed, just trying to be a concerned patron. He paused mid wine-pouring “err, yes, baby’s fine”. I wasn’t convinced. “If … something’s up, we’re more than capable of going and finding some herbs or any other form of help if you need?” “No, No, it’s quite alright” busying himself with putting the now empty jug away. I leaned in “Are you sure?” I said, genuinely concerned that the baby was in trouble and he was missing an opportunity for us to help. “Yes, it’s fine, if you’d kindly stop asking, I frankly find it quite rude”

Melech stepped alongside me, I looked over and saw his eyes glowing red. “There’s something you’re not telling us,” he said angrily, his voice rising in volume with each word. I put my hand on his arm as the ground started to shake and the innkeeper started to cower away behind the bar, “Melech, there’s no need for this.” “You are hiding INFORMATION” continued Melech “you will tell us what has happened to the baby”. The innkeeper was gibbering in fear, clearly now unable to tell us anything even if he wanted to “Melech!” I snapped, squeezing his arm. The rumbling subsided. “Look,” I said softly to the innkeeper “Do you know anyone around here who might have a cart we could borrow” “err, Steve, the lumberjack, across the way,” he said quickly, still clearly very shaken. I turned to Melech. “Melech,” I said firmly “go with Baldwin, see if we can borrow the cart”. Melech grumbled and headed out.

Once he was out the door, I turned back to the innkeeper, who was still very shaken but seemed to have relaxed a little with Melech gone. “I’m terribly sorry about that, you’re right, it’s rude, we don’t need to pry about the baby”. The innkeeper shook himself off and came back to the bar. “That’s quite alright.” “Over the past couple of days, I’ve remembered I speak Tavern,” I said wryly, as I slid three gold across the bar “There were a couple of stories I felt were unfinished before.” “Oh no, no, no, don’t worry about that,” he said, guiltily shoving the gold back across “there’s nothing to tell!” “Really?” I said “No more news about the roaming cottage or those crimson riders?” “Oh … yeah! hoo boy, those crimson riders are a bad piece of work” he started babbling, clearly jumping too hard at the opportunity to change the subject. Beiro tapped me on the shoulder “He’s hiding something” he said to me in Elvish. “Well, yeah”, I responded in the same “but what? He’s clearly unwilling to tell us”. “He was shocked we came back ok, he knows something’s wrong with the forest. Maybe he has some involvement?” He was laying the cards down on the table, making things clear. Then an idea. The innkeeper is here, his wife is here, if the baby is indeed ill, then why are neither of them looking after it. Even if the baby is fine, it seems odd to leave a newborn child on its own. “What if we asked to see it?” I said to Beiro “If the baby’s fine, he should have no trouble showing us. If he can’t, then he has some explaining to do” “That might work” said Beiro

I turned back to the innkeeper and asked, now back in common “Sorry to come back to this, but err, I mean, if everything’s fine with the baby, would you mind if we could take a look at them?” The innkeeper glared. “This again? Look, you’re becoming far more trouble than you’re worth. I think you should leave” he said, pointing towards the door. The innkeeper’s voice was raising, but shaking, more confident that Melech had left, but probably unsure he could do anything if I didn’t leave on my own accord. There was a long pause as I stood there and narrowed my eyes at him. Finally, breaking the silence, I spoke up, strongly and evenly “Look. You and your wife are both out here, rather than looking after the baby. We’ve been in the Fey Forest and something is going wrong and you’re giving us every reason to suspect that your child is related ” He sighed “The child’s not mine, it’s Old Mother Basket’s”. It took all of the elven half of me to maintain composure and avoid a spit-take. The innkeeper continued, “My wife gave birth a couple of days and Old Mother Basket came to claim it yesterday.” I was already pretty clear how Old Mother Basket operated after our own encounter with her “What did she offer you?” I asked. “We…had never been able to have a baby before,” the innkeeper responded slowly “Old Mother Basket offered us the chance to conceive…as long as she had the firstborn”. I did not like where this was headed

Having found the painting I suggested we should return it to the Barron as soon as possible. Amafey however seemed to think dealing with the hang and the corruption in the forest was more important. Melech agreed with me however. We were being paid to retrieve the painting and nothing else. We did however agree to search the rest of the house first.

We thoroughly searched the ground floor finding nothing of particular interest, just the usual items and rooms expected in such a house. The state of the larder though confirmed it had been abandoned for some time.

We proceeded up the stairs to the next level and entered a room filled with various ornaments. I noticed what seemed to the another copy of the painting ahead on the wall! As I stepped forward into the room, without warning, the carpet I was upon came to life and attacked me. It wrapped around me tightly and I struggled to breath, I could hear some of my ribs cracking. I heard Melech cast a spell an felt a searing pain across my body and cried out. The carpet didn’t seem that affected by the spell.

I managed to shake the carpet off but was unable to hit with my sword. It lunged back towards me wrapping itself around, crushing me again. I felt another wave of pain wash over me, Melech had cast another spell, he seemed not to know or care it was harming me also…

The next thing I remember is waking up outside the house again. Amafey explained that Melech had also been knocked out by the carpet, but Beiro and her had managed to defeat it, before dragging us to safety. As there seemed to be at least a second copy of the painting Amafey wanted to reenter the house and examine the one on the ground floor. Melech and I were reluctant to enter again but I said I would cover the stairs through one of the arrow slits.

As Amafey reached out and touched the painting I heard a strange noise and she yelled out. The painting wasn’t a painting at all, but a mimic! I sprinted around to the front and entered the house again to confront it. Amafey had been knocked unconscious and was being dragged to safety by Beiro. I let loose with my bow hitting the mimic before drawing my sword and moving into to attack. Beiro put Amafey down in the doorway before drawing his sword to join in the fight. Between us we managed to kill the mimic.

We decided to rest again while Amafey recovered and then proceeded back into the house once again.

We stood there for a moment admiring the painting.
“We should get this back to the baron”, Baldwin said, breaking the silence.
“What about the forest?” I said, “We never found out how long this corruption has been going on for and how fast it’s spreading”.
“We’re not being paid for doing anything with the forest,” Melech replied bitterly.
“But you heard the pixie, we’re supposed to be heroes, saving the forest is far more heroic, will have far more prestige than retrieving some painting” I stammered desperately, trying to appeal to what I thought might count for something.
“I disagree. this painting chronicles a long-lost historic tale and we’ll be remembered for finding it” countered Melech steadfastly.
I sighed, both Baldwin and Melech didn’t seem concerned with helping the forest and although Beiro would probably be with me, we’d need their help as well to defeat whatever curse was infesting it.
“Well, I think we all agree we need to search the rest of this mansion first, maybe something else here will change the situation.” The rest of the group nodded in unison, something we could agree on at least.

We had a thorough exploration of the rest of ground floor, finding more signs of abandonment, although seemingly suddenly, dirty mouldy pots and rotting food abound. The larder had a couple of non-perishables left that could tide my rations situation over for a couple of days if we found this place was indeed empty.

We proceeded up the stairs to the next level and found a landing room with various trinkets in it, ceramic vases and the like. After taking another step into the room, however, the carpet reared up and wrapped itself around Baldwin. We needed to do something fast before it suffocated him!. Melech cast the same wave of energy spell from before, with a slight effect on the carpet, but muffled yelps told us it was hurting Baldwin too. Baldwin managed to get free briefly, giving me and Beiro a chance to get a clean attack on the carpet, but it quickly attached itself again. I tried to grab the carpet in an attempt to tear it free, but my fingers were like butter, failing to get a grasp on the flailing fabric. At that point, it went limp. Baldwin was out of air and it dropped him on the floor, unconscious. It shifted straight over and wrapped Melech, who could do little to defend himself and it wasn’t long before he succumbed to the same fate as Baldwin, as Beiro and myself failed to tear the carpet off. After dispatching Melech, it went for Beiro next, but Beiro was having none of it and beat it back with his axe, eventually grabbing it and tearing it in two.

As Beiro set about tearing the carpet into pieces, I put my ear to one of the doors to see if anything else might be coming. Listening for a moment I heard a faint bumping sound, but it was definitely coming closer. “Quick!” I hissed to Beiro “We need to get these two downstairs, now!”. I tied a piece of the carpet to the bottom Baldwin’s head so I could drag him down the stairs safely, while Beiro quickly dragged Melech down with less concern. At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped, curiosity getting the better of me, and looked back up the stairs. I waited for a few moments then suddenly one of the ceramic vases came flying past my head, shattering on the wall behind me. “Move!” I yelled at Beiro, who had also stopped and we both rushed out of the house dragging our unconscious allies. It seemed as though a rushing of air was following us and the moment we reached the threshold of the front door, it slammed shut behind us.

With everyone safely outside, I caught my breath and went back to the front door and hit the knocker again “Helloooo?!? We were hoping to talk to the owner of the house. We were worried they might be in trouble”. No response. Perturbed I pushed the door open again, still unlocked and just left it that way before going back to the others.

Baldwin and Melech woke up a couple of hours later, groggy and somewhat incredulous that they were downed by a carpet. “I have some bad news,” I said, as they stirred. There was something I’d spotted in the carpet’s room before we were chased out. “I don’t know whether you noticed, but there’s another copy of the painting upstairs, in the room with the carpet. At least one of them has to be a decoy of some kind. I want to have a closer look at the one on this floor, see whether it’s an illusion or something. It’ll give us a better idea of what we’re dealing with” “Well, I’m not going in there again right now, I still need more time to recover,” Melech said grumpily

I walked back into the house, cautiously checking around every corner for floating crockery, with Beiro close behind. Baldwin went around to the outside to keep an eye on the stairs through one of the arrow slits. I walked over to the painting with one eye still on the stairs and reached out to touch it. With a slight slurping sound my hand stuck to it like glue. Crap. “Err, we have a problem here!” I shouted as I watched in fear as a set of teeth formed and sunk into my arm. “Melech! I think it’s a mimic!” I yelled, aware he was outside and unwilling to enter the house again unless urgent. I felt Beiro’s hands around my waist as he started pulling me away from the painting and the extra force gave me a chance to wrest my hand free, but the mimic lashed out again, sinking its teeth deep into my shoulder and the shock knocked me unconscious.

I woke up in a cold sweat in a tent what must’ve been a couple of hours later. I tentatively got up and made my way outside, finding the others relaxing on the grass. Baldwin was playing cards, Melech was leafing through his new book and Beiro was staring very intently at a little colony of rabbits hopping around on the other bank. “Thank you for getting me out of there. I guess…it was a little reckless in retrospect”. Melech grunted “This is a pretty serious mage’s house alright. There’s every trick in the book guarding this place, but no sign of the actual owner. We’ll need to recover fully before we take this on” he said.

Once more we headed into the house, determined to get to bottom of its secrets, undeterred by its numerous deadly challenges.

I waited for the others outside and then we made our way back to the stream. The area definitely seemed more brambly than I recalled. Maybe the corruption the fey mentioned. Nevertheless we continued to head upstream as before.

After about an hour walking along the rocky shore a worm like creature jumps out attacking me. It missed its first strike but taken off guard I also miss my retaliation. It lashed out again this time hitting me before grabbing hold and biting me hard in the shoulder. I staggered a bit but managed to shake it off. Tis but a scratch, nothing I couldn’t handle. Melech’s magic missiles struck it moments before Beiro moved in slashing at it with one of his hand axes. Why the hell is he not using his long sword I wondered. I was beginning to question his decision making…

Amafey began playing some energizing music and my focus was restored, the pain in my shoulder but a minor inconvenience! Amafey lunged forward attempting to stab it with her rapier, but was wide of the mark. Maybe she should stick to music? My next swing with my long sword struck home, cutting it deeply. It switched targets and struck out towards Beiro. It however fell short and missed before being finished by another wave of Melech’s missiles.

Amafey informed us the creature was called a Grick. Having taken quite a nasty bite it was agreed that I would rest while Amafey and Beiro searched for the Grick’s lair. Melech stayed behind and helped patch me up. Amafey and Beiro returned later having been unable to find the lair. We rested and had lunch while I regained some of my strength.

We set off again after about an hour and soon came across a large fortified house set in a clearing. Maybe the house of the fey friend? The house itself looks fairly recently built and quite well kept. Amafey walked up to the front door and tried to get the attention of anyone inside. Beiro had tried to follow but Melech stopped him. Probably best we don’t crowd the door as I could see it had murder holes above it.

As Amafey was having no luck I decided to walk over the try the door. It was unlocked! I shouted in but got no response. We decided as the door was open we would wait to see if anyone was around. After a while however I was convinced no one was going to come and decided to enter the house and look around. The others objected but I saw no point in waiting more. The door was unlocked so the owner was likely inside in one state or another.

I pushed the front further open and went In. As I did so a suit of armour slammed into me pinning me to the wall. A sword, that looked like it was flying, slashed me cutting quite deep. Beiro rather than helping grabbed hold of me pulling me back out the building! I objected but he was determined. The armour and sword did not pursue.

I wanted to go back in a finish the job but reluctantly agreed to withdraw. The others decided that we would rest till morning and then attempt to enter the house again. Melech said he needed time to prepare new spells and form a plan of attack.

We first scouted the outside of the building looking for a arrow slit that would give an angle on the armour. None was to be found however and we would have to use the direct approach. Not that I have much objection to this mind you!

I lead through the front door and was immediately set on again by the armour. This time however we were ready. Melech cast a spell I had never seen before, electrical energy pulsated through the air striking the armour and sword. The sword was blocking the way in so I struck out at it. After a couple of blows it shattered to the ground and I managed to push further in. This allowed the others to enter. After quite a few more blows and a stab through the visor by Amafey, the armour crumpled to the ground.

I looked up and noticed a huge painting on the opposite wall, it looked like the one we had been looking for!

As we got up to leave, the old lady said she could offer more. “If I were to have something of your mother’s, I could get a better idea of where she might be” she croaked. I had a think. My flute was the first thing that came to mind, but that was only a replica to remind me of my mother, it was my father that gave it to me. Then I remembered the trinket I had hanging from my belt. Two toy soldiers tied together, one with its head missing, had been hanging there since I set off from Kennrylatin. It’s a silly thing, but it’s probably the only thing I know my mother gave to me, back before we lost her. I offered them to Old Mother Basket and she said she could see what she could find before Melech came back to return his book. We bid her good day and she said we were welcome back anytime for more tea.

The walk back to the stream was fairly brief, but along the way, we realised that there were perhaps more brambles this way than there should be. Were we on the edge of the corrupted area already? Maybe we’d not been oblivious before and it was, in fact, spreading fairly rapidly. The brambles soon cleared to leave light forest and a rocky shore as we approached the stream.

We continued where we left off before meeting Old Mother Basket, continuing upriver. It was still late morning at this point and we still had plenty of the day left for exploring. Suddenly, after about half an hour of walking, I heard a yelp from behind me, Baldwin had been attacked by one of the rocks! As we turned we could see a grey worm-like creature that had clearly been hiding nearby. I thought I recognised it from one of the books I’d read but had more pressing concerns such as it trying to latch itself onto Baldwin. Baldwin struck back against the creature’s torso, landing a hit, but it took this opportunity to wrap the tentacles around its mouth onto Baldwin’s shoulder and sunk its beak deep into the flesh. Baldwin shook it off, but looked worse for wear, with a gash trickling blood down his arm. Melech started muttering arcane incantations, firing the now familiar missiles of magic from his fingers, hitting the creature true and Beiro rushed past me to join the fray as well. I got my flute out and started playing in an attempt to inspire Baldwin toward triumph, given his more precarious state. While playing, I walked forwards and in one swift motion, returned the flute to its pocket, drew my rapier and tried to stab it in the beast. My combat skills are still new and fairly untested and my inexperience meant I made my stab in between movements, missing it’s twisted form. My song of inspiration for Baldwin was enough though, and his next blow struck the creature in it’s assumed face, cleaving its beak in two. As it slumped to the ground, we nervously glanced around, checking that there wasn’t any other danger hiding with the rocks on the shore, but it seemed as though we were safe.

The creature was a grick, something I’d read about in a tome in the Kennrylatin library. They are typically underground beings, occasionally seen on the surface. Solitary hunters, hiding and waiting for prey to come to them. Remembering these details, I informed the others and started searching the local area with Beiro to see if there was a lair nearby. We didn’t find one, which indicated the grick was fairly new to the area, but we did find a freshly chewed deer carcass, which meant the beast had had an ample last meal. We came back as Melech was helping Baldwin tend to his wounded shoulder. “It’ll just need a short rest,” he said, so we sat down and chatted for the next hour.

During our rest, we ended up on the topic of trinkets. I mentioned the toy soldiers had been a somewhat silly keepsake, but I’d probably miss them. If they were to be useful in finding my mother it would be for the best though. Baldwin said he had something kind of similar and he took out a small notebook, followed by a pen. Writing in the notebook, he showed us that it would not accept any ink, any page would just stay blank. He wasn’t sure why he keeps it or how he got it, he just found it in the bottom of his bag one day and has just left it there. Melech said he had a withered goblin hand and just kind of shrugged.

Once we started up again, we were walking for only about half an hour before encountering a clearing by the stream. A large fortified building stood in the middle of it, three-stories tall complete with arrow slits. It looked like a relatively recent build, with the outer walls showing no sign of decay or coverings of ivy. I said we should find out if anyone’s home and cautiously walked over to the front door, making sure to not look like a threat that anyone inside might attack. I thought I heard Beiro behind me, but when I turned Melech was holding him by the shoulder. I reached the door to find a large brass knocker. I knocked three times, the knocker booming with each hit. “Hello?” I said, rather boldly. Nothing. I waited a minute. Still nothing. I made an illusory pink teapot appear near one of the top floor windows, to draw the attention of any inhabitants too far up to hear the knocker. Still nothing. Baldwin came over and pushed the door to find it unlocked. We tried the knocker again, then decided to sit down nearby for a short while to see if the owner was out and might return soon.

After a while, Baldwin grew restless. There was no sign of life from inside the house and he wanted a poke around. I was against the idea. This seemed like someone’s house and you don’t just go rifling through someone’s belongings like that. We gathered at the front door again while discussing this and despite my protests, Baldwin wanted a look and pushed through the door. Beiro went to follow as well, going where the action was to be. Melech stayed behind, but it seemed he was intrigued as well. “We might as well go in now. We don’t want to leave those two idiots to their own devices in there” Melech reasoned. “Yeah, I think at this point I’d rather go in to try and diffuse the situation if we do find the owner,” I responded, talking myself around in the face of the evolving situation. We turned to go into the house but were greeted with the of Baldwin wrestling with a suit of armour, fending off a floating sword.

We stood there, kind of transfixed for a moment. “We should just get out of here,” Melech said “try again with a plan”. “No, I think we’ve got to deal with this now, I don’t think Baldwin’s one to back down from a fight”. We needed to send in the big guns. I picked up my ukulele.
“Beiro, Beiro, it’s time to rage,
release that beast, from its cage,
get in there, kick that armour’s ass,
do it now or face my sass”
and as I strummed the final chord I smacked him on the butt. Reflexively, Beiro ran into the house, but instead of going for the armour, he grabbed Baldwin around the chest from behind. Baldwin tried to fend off the elf barbarian, wanting a clean fight against the armour, but couldn’t wriggle free and was dragged onto the grass outside. The armour and sword didn’t chase us out the door and “Ok”, said Melech “Now let’s think about this. Enchanted armour and the like are typically defence mechanism for the houses of wizards, so now I’m VERY interested”

We decided to assault the keep in the morning and set up camp outside, in an easy position to see whether anyone did eventually return. In the morning we had our breakfast and readied ourselves by the doorway to the building. I started playing a little war-song for Baldwin as he was the first to enter and I was glad to see that it seemed to be pumping him up nicely, imbuing him with bravery for the battle ahead. He opened the door and quickly hurried in, but was met by the sword halfway down the entranceway, not leaving much space to fight.

As we all crowded in the entry corridor, Melech told me to step back, he needed to cast a spell and could only shape it so much. I did as he asked and as I did so he let out a ripple of electrical energy, which didn’t seem to affect Baldwin and Beiro. Baldwin gave the sword one final clash and it shattered, shards of metal falling to the floor. This gave Beiro the opportunity to push past and start attacking the now cornered suit of armour. I saw my opportunity to dart in as well and went for a jab with my rapier, but the blow glance’s off the armour’s…armour.

Now cornered, however, the armour wasn’t due to last much longer. Both Beiro and Baldwin were landing direct hits and it was taking damage from Melech’s magic too. It was started to slow, shifting in jerkier movements. Finally, I leaned in and grabbed it by the helmet visor and using it to steady myself, drove my rapier into the gap at the bottom of the chest plate. As the sword drove through the magical energy holding the armour up, it dispelled, causing the suit of armour collapse under its own weight. Still holding the helmet aloft, I tossed it over my shoulder. With no other immediate threats, we were now free to explore the reception room that we had ended up in and it didn’t take us long for us to notice the giant painting. The one with a human and an elf, heroes, that match the description Baron Ramsgate III had given us.

The thing that hit Melech turned out to be a pixie. It shouted at us to hide. Suddenly I heard Orcs shouting ahead of us. It turns out that Beiro understands Orcish and told us the Orcs were hunting for the pixie. Amafey and Melech climbed up the nearest large tree. Beiro attempted to follow, but just couldn’t manage to climb and quickly gave up. Not sure what use he thought he would be up a tree in combat.

The orcs came into range and I let loose with an arrow hitting one. Magical darts came flying out of the tree striking the leading orc, downing him. Beiro let loose with a javelin. A weird glow appeared around two of the orcs. Presumably some kind of spell cast by Amafey.

I let loose with another arrow hitting another orc. The orcs then responded by throwing some Javelins at Beiro. He was hit but responded by throwing his own Javelin back. More magical darts from Melech struck the remaining Orcs with one more going down. The remaining Orcs threw more Javelins before moving forward to engage us. One of the orcs struck Beiro knocking him down. I saw the other orc to my left approaching so draw my sword and with a powerful strike cut him down. By now the orc that had struck Beiro had also been killed.

Amafey, Melech and I rushed over to help Beiro. I managed to stop his bleeding and stabilise him. I searched the bodies of the orcs finding nothing useful other than a bit of coin. I noticed the warpaint was identical on all the orcs. Not something that I had seen before. They had acted far more as a single unit than I had experienced before.

Amafey was talking to the pixie, who was explaining that a “hag” was corrupting the forest and orcs had been coming into forest frequently. We asked
the pixie about the painting from the hall. Alas though it didn’t know anything about it. However it told us of a “fey friend” who lived in a cottage further upstream.

We discussed what to do next and came to the conclusion we make camp for the night and then proceeding upstream to find the fey friend in the morning. We set off early continuing up the river at a steady pace. After some time we came across a scarecrow on the bank of the river. It turned towards us, a rather odd behavior for a scarecrow! At this point we noticed another one further into the woods from the stream. Amafey cast an illusion of her self into front of one of them. It struck out at it, clearly not something friendly.

We decided to avoid them by crossing over to the other side of the stream for a short while. Further up stream we came across an old woman picking mushrooms. She noticed us and yelled out a greeting. We went over and began talking to her and asked her questions about the fey and orcs we had encounter. We also inquired about the fey friend and painting we were searching for. She replied that she had never seen any fey or heard of the fey friend or painting.

She invited us back to tea at her cottage stating she rarely had any visitors. We accepted, though I was a little uneasy about it, maybe she was the hag? We began following her and soon came to a clearing where the cottage was located.

We went inside and the old woman set about making tea. I excused myself to use the privy. I came back in as the woman was taking the pot of the fire to make the tea. Seemingly mid conversation with the others she was stating our “true purposes”. I was beginning to grow suspicious of the woman, not all was quite as it seemed.

She offered Melech time to study some of her books, he seemed somewhat reluctant at first but was unable to resist the offer and accepted. The old woman stated she would think on a favour to ask for in return. She pointed out a particular book on a self and Melech went over to retrieve it.

I sipped the tea while Melech quickly scanned through the book. he requested he be able to keep the book for a while and the woman agreed. I had had enough at the point and stated that we should leave, making my way towards the front door. The old woman was beginning to make me really uneasy. Beiro spoke up and asked what the woman’s name was. People call me Old Mother Basket she stated.

Having just bounced off of Melech’s chest, the pixie squeaked “Hide!” shortly followed by “Demon!” having glanced up at the face of the being it had run into and it darted behind Beiro. I carefully peered around Beiro. “Are you ok, little friend?" I asked, but at that moment we heard shouting in the woods behind us. Orcs! Their crazed yells told us that we had but a few moments. Melech and I quickly clambered up the nearest tree. Beiro needed reminding that he was better suited to combat on the ground rather than up a tree, but he and Baldwin readied themselves down below.

The ensuing battle was brief. With the element of surprise, we made swift first blows, Melech’s magic took the leader of the four orcs as I used some of my performance tricks to make them easier to hit. Some javelins went back and forth and I threw my dagger into the fray, lopping off part of an orc’s ear. The last orc alive, however, landed a blow on Beiro, knocking him down. Baldwin finished off the orc and we all rushed over in an attempt to stabilise poor Beiro. He was unconscious and in a sorry state, but we pooled our limited medical knowledge together to stop him bleeding out. Even so, it would be a couple of hours before he would regain consciousness.

The pixie had been flitting around during the battle and we now had a chance to stop and talk to her, after first assuring her that Melech was a perfectly harmless demon, at least not to friends. She correctly identified us as heroic adventurers and thanked us for saving her. There was a deeper problem though, what she was truly running from and pleaded with us to lend our heroics to quash evil once again. “There’s a hag,” she said “she’s corrupted the forest dryad and is defiling the forest. If I didn’t leave, I would be affected as well.” Orcs had been showing up more too, maybe related, maybe not. We assured her we would do what we could, but also asked about the painting from the hall. She didn’t know anything but said if anyone did, it would be the fey friend, who had once lived further up the stream. Unfortunately, the fey friend hadn’t been seen in years and no-one is exactly sure what happened to them. The pixie said if we were to go north, we’d know we were reaching the corrupted area by the thicker, thornier undergrowth. We bid goodbye to her, as she was still worried for her safety and sanity and needed to flee further away from the corruption

We decided to make camp where we were, to give Beiro time to recover and reflect on where to head next. After searching and clearing the orc bodies, Baldwin came back with an announcement. “There’s something more organised about these Orcs. Whenever I saw them before they were disorganised. Ragtag. Reliant on numbers and barely even allied to each other. The orcs we just killed all share the same warpaint. Someone, or something, is bringing them together and organising them”. As much of a concern as this was, there wasn’t much we could do about it, aside from dispatching any other orcs we run into along the way. We were in the fey woods and had fairy and foresty matters to attend to. The hag and the spreading corruption were obviously a pressing concern, but we agreed that if we were to do this right, we should try and enlist the help of the fey friend. They might be able to provide us with some useful information on both how to stop the corruption, defeat the hag and rescue the dryad. Maybe they’d have the painting too, but I think we heroes had now found a truer quest.

The night passed without incident, we had breakfast and set out once again, continuing up the river. After walking for a while, we came across what appeared to be a couple of scarecrows. As we approached, they slowly turned until they were facing us. Given that the slight breeze wisping through the woods wouldn’t have been strong enough to move them, there must be some magic at play. They didn’t seem to be guarding anything, in particular, so we decided to give them a wide berth, crossing the river. As we passed, I cast an illusion of myself near the scarecrow. Suddenly it came alive, swiping through the illusion, but failing to find purchase. Clearly hostile, perhaps made to ward away from an area, but with no obvious placement. We carried on up the river, crossing back a short way away.

A short time later, we saw an old lady by the riverside picking mushrooms. We started talking in hushed whispers. This wouldn’t be the hag, would it? The one that’s corrupting the dryad in the northern forest? Probably not, we’ve not been going north and we haven’t had to start wading through thorns. As we were discussing though, she spotted us and waved a mushroom at us “Hello there! Unusual to see travellers in these parts”. We greeted her and said it was weird to see an old lady like her deep in the woods as well. We got chatting, but she seemed to know little about anything we’d encountered or had been searching for. She didn’t think she was the fey friend, having never seen a pixie or any such creature in her life, had not seen any orcs and didn’t know anything about the painting. She took little time in asking us back to her cottage for a cup of tea though.

Now, pretty much every story I’ve read that features an old lady in the woods would tell me that this is a terrible idea and we definitely should not go back to her cottage for tea. She did seem genuinely nice though and I suddenly really fancied a nice cuppa. We all agreed to tea, although Beiro and Baldwin seemed a lot more cautious, and she started leading us into the woods, away from the little river. After 15 minutes of walking, we reached a small clearing with a cottage in it. It looked pretty well established in the clearing, probably not the roaming cottage. “Has this always been here?” queried Baldwin, although mostly under his breath. He was probably having the same chain of thought as me. “Well houses don’t just get up and walk away” the old lady quipped, which was oddly…well…specific, given our concerns.

Once inside, the old lady put a pot of water on to boil within the hearth. “No tea for me” Melech muttered. Maybe there was something here he didn’t trust? I kept my eye on the pot, I would be able to see if the old lady did anything funny with the water, I might even stop it boiling if I watch it hard enough. The old lady pattered around the kitchen, getting some mismatched crockery and putting a cup and saucer down in front of each of us, including Melech, oblivious to what he had said. “Take a seat!” she said, as she reached Beiro. “No, I prefer to stand” Beiro responded, rather shortly. “I insist, I insist!” the old lady repeated, but Beiro refused again. The old lady narrowed her eyes at him, then removed his cup and saucer “Well no tea for you then!”. This actually put me at ease a bit, she didn’t seem so hellbent on getting tea down everyone’s throats after all.

As the water was heating up, she started to ask us about why we had all come so far from home. I told her about my journey to play my music far and wide, in an attempt to bring joy to people. Melech told her about his trek from far-off lands in his search for new knowledge. She no longer tried to address Beiro and he was stone quiet in return, which isn’t exactly unusual, but Baldwin excused himself to the outhouse before the conversation truly turned to him.

I started playing my rendition of “Bluechaps” on my ukelele, which had proven popular since reaching Ustia. She seemed to enjoy it, saying it was nice to hear music again. Then I had a brainwave, she was quite old and could well have been somewhere more populated when my mother was around. I started to play “Amazing Mace”, an old song about a mighty Paladin, which was apparently one of my mother’s favourites. “Oh, I haven’t heard this in a while!” she exclaimed, clearly happy to hear it again. “Oh, you recognise it?” I responded, “Oh, I get about a little bit from time to time.” The old lady chuckled “Where did you learn it?” “It was one of my mother’s favourite songs,” I said, quietly. The old lady leaned in, “I’m hearing the past tense there, my dear, what happened to your mother?” I explained about my parents and the orc raid. I opened up more than I’m normally inclined to do so, but it was like something was tugging the information out of me. I took a deep gulp of the tea. It was a proper tea, dried leaves from the south, rather than some local herbal concoction. It was fantastic, I had only tried such tea once or twice before. Unusual for a mysterious aged lady in the woods to be in possession of such things, but I felt like I was already getting the hang of things not being normal here.

As I was finishing my stories, the old lady hefted a large pot onto the fire with a great “ooof!”. “Do you want a hand with that?” I offered. “No, I’m quite fine. But would you like a hand?”. Suddenly the atmosphere in the cottage changed. It darkened, closed in, grew heavy, but with a certain sense of intrigue. “I’m…sorry?” I responded cautiously. “You’re all searching for something,” she said, grinning while stirring the contents of the small cauldron. “Yes, we told you, the painting” Melech interrupted “do you know something?” “No, not that, you’re not all out here just to find some old piece of cloth, you’re all searching for something more”. Turning to me “You’re searching for your mother”, to Melech “you seek knowledge”, turning to Baldwin “You seek validation for your work defending the land“, although slightly less sure of herself. Finally, she turned to Beiro “And you seek a bath!” “I can help you all find these things” she continued, to all of us “except you”, snapping at Beiro.

Melech was clearly having an internal struggle, he didn’t trust her, but here was someone offering him an opportunity to broaden his knowledge in a rapid fashion. “What do you want in return?” Melech queried, aware that there’s no way there wasn’t a catch. “Oh, just some favour down the line, I’ll think of something suitable.” This lacked the clarity Melech was looking for and he stopped, deep in thought. “Ok,” he said, mind made up. They shook hands, but Melech came away from the exchange looking like he had been deeply wronged in some way. “Take the fifth book from the right on the 4th shelf. You’ll find what you’re looking for there”. Melech got up and retrieved it. As far as I could tell it was some sort of spellbook. Melech sat down and started flicking through it, nodding slowly as he went. “Am I able to borrow this book for a while?” Melech asked. The old lady nodded sagely “Of course, I’m sure you will return it when the time is right”

“And you can help me find my mother?” I asked, cautiously. “Not exactly, I saw her in passing, but not since she was taken to the mines” She hadn’t explicitly for a favour in return and we hadn’t shaken on a deal, but I knew her telling me that would probably still tie me to one of these ‘favours’. “Th…thank you” I stuttered, surprised I finally had some sort of lead. “Just remember who gave you the information,” she said. “Of course,” I said warmly, genuinely thankful. It’s something to look out for at the very least, although these mines could be anywhere.

As we were getting up to leave, Beiro finally broke his silence “What is your name?” he asked. The old lady smiled a toothy grin and hoisted up her mushroom basket. “Oh, people call me Old Mother Basket. I’m sure I’ll see you all again soon”

Amafey’s starting speaking, presumable to a fey, switching between various languages, none of which I could understand. Not being of much immediate use and with the other seemly occupied I kept watch. After a while a small dragon flew out clutching something and was out of sight before I could react.

Beiro and Amafey climbed back down to meet us on the ground. Amafey showed us a crown she had found and explained that it could change size. Indeed as she handed it to Melech is grow larger, big enough to fit on his head. We took a break while Melech examined the item. He was able to determine that it was the crown of the Forest Queen. It would enable wearer to speak Sylvan and the fey would consider it a sign of friendship. It was decided that I would wear the crown being the only human.

After some discussion I managed to convince the others we had not fully searched the hall and needed to do so. We all climbed back up the second floor and gave it a thorough second search. Nothing new was found but best to rule everything else. We then continued down a side door that lead down some stairs to the back of the hall. We had not been able to search there.

As I exited the door at the bottom of the stairs shrieking erupted and something struck me hard in the face. A fungi was just behind the door and had lashed out. I slashed back at the fungi with my long sword striking it hard. The fungi burst into flame, presumable a spell cash by Melech. It seemed dead at this point however shrieking continued and I could see another fungi up ahead.

A javelin flew over my head striking the second fungi. I whipped out my bow, shooting an arrow at it. It struck home and the shrieking ceased. We inspected the fountain seeing a statue that seemed to be of the Forest Queen wearing the very crown I had on. I thought as the crown was magic it might interact with the statue in someway. But my efforts were fruitless and met with scornful remarks from Melech. Wizards always seem somewhat imperious.

Seeing there was nothing important we had missed before we left the hall and rested while I tended my wounds. After about an hour and a brief discussion, it was agreed that we would head further into the wood. We started followed the stream up from the hall, using it as something to guide us. After sometime of uneventful walking I heard a thud as something struck Melech in the chest.

Confronted with the little Sylvan-talking dragon, I asked: “Do you speak common, little dragon?” It cocked it’s head to one side, not entirely sure if it had understood, but then responded in a language I didn’t recognise. Clear that we were trying to find a language that we both understood, I tried Elvish, to which it shook its head, then finally conceded to Sylvan, just to make some progress in conversation.

Having established our language of communication, I figured my best option was courtesy. This could be his home, but if we apologised for breaking and entering they might decide we’re friendly and divulge some information about the obviously missing items. “Sorry if we’ve intruding..” I started, but the dragon cut across me, “whatcha lookin’ for?”. The jig was up and it was worth it at this point to see whether the dragon was going to help or not. Any information might be useful, even if it was in a roundabout messing with us for amusement kind of way. “There was clearly something on this cushion here,” I said, trying to take the focus off of our true goal “and in this picture frame too. Do you have any idea where they might’ve gone?” “Maybe” the dragon responded, clearly not trying their hardest to be helpful.

Realised the little dragon might have his own little hoard, I offered a trade. He’d obviously been watching for a little while. “I want what was in that little coffer”. Easy come, easy go, I thought, at least we could get a lead on the painting and perhaps something else as well. At this point, a voice piped up in my ear. Melech had cast some sort of spell allowing us to communicate in secret and wanted to check everything was fine. All he and the others could hear was babble in Sylvan. While making my best thinking face towards the dragon, deliberately over the aspects of the deal, I indicated to Melech the current situation and that everything seemed to be fine.

Turning my attention back to the dragon, I agreed to give him the items from the coffer in exchange for information, but, not entirely trusting the usefulness of the information, offered one item now and the rest later. He picked out the Ewer from the assembled items, swooped down to collect and returned to the rafters. “Try over there” it smirked, pointing towards the corner of the room, opposite the door that led downstairs. I did as it said and eventually found a secret door leading to some sort of storeroom. Still not entirely trusting the situation and half-expecting to get locked in a musty closer, I announced what was going on in elven, so that at least Melech and Beiro could understand and come help if necessary.

The room contained a bunch of fabrics and robes and a heap of dusty old incense-burners. I started sifting through the fabrics, looking for anything with a pattern or better yet, a design that could indicate it was the painting canvas. The majority of the fabric seemed to be faded ceremonial robes, but as I unfurled some more towards the back, something heavy fell out with a thunk and started rolling across the floor. Quickly scooping the object up, I found it to be some sort of ornate crown, intricately designed. As I scooped it up, it started shrinking slightly, until it reached a size that would make it perfectly onto my own head. Poking my head out the storeroom door, I motioned to the dragon “Is this what I should be looking for?” I said, waving the crown. “Perhaps” replied the dragon, launching itself off into the air from the rafters and out of sight. I guess I’ll keep the rest of the treasure…

I clambered back up the rope and we regrouped at the base of the back of the hall. I showed the others the crown and passed it to Melech. Having the biggest head, I expected that, if the crown were to change size again, it would have the most obvious effect in his hands and I was proven correct. We all watched as it grew large enough to fit onto Melech’s big ol’ horned head. Clearly magical. We took a break over the next hour, starting lunch, while Melech examined the crown more closely. Suddenly, he triumphantly announced he had a breakthrough. This was the crown of the Forest Queen, a symbol of the agreement referenced in the folk tales we had read back at the library. Once “attuned” to a wearer, it would allow them to speak Sylvan and fey would be generally friendlier to them. As the only human in our group, it seemed best to have Baldwin wear the crown and I would be able to keep my own Sylvan linguistic abilities hidden until appropriate again.

The party was split on what to do next. I was confident in my searching abilities and declared that there was nothing left for us at the hall. Baldwin, on the other hand, was certain that there was more to find and wanted a proper look himself. We all clambered onto the roof and into the back room again. After another brief search of the altar room, which didn’t turn up anything novel, we proceeded down the stairs, Baldwin first, to see where they came out. A proper look indicated that the entrance on the other side was hidden and came out just beside the cracked fountain. Baldwin burst through the door and was immediately lashed out at by a violent shroom and the incessant screeching started up yet again. Baldwin replied in part and hacked the shroom down, with a little help from Melech’s magical fire. There remained a screeching from the other side of the room, so Beiro showed off some of his cooking expertise and made a mushroom skewer using his javelin.

Seeing that the others had the shrooms under control, I decided to get my feet wet, quite literally, and examine the fountain. In the centre there was a little statue of a humanoid creature with wings and sat atop its little head was a tiny stone replica of the crown. It was clearly quite worn down from the years since its inception and did not seem to yield any more secrets. As I was inspecting the statue, the screams were suddenly silenced, leaving only the soft babbling of the water and the drip from the damp. This was shortly disturbed though by a large splash, as Baldwin came wading in to look at the statue too. He took the crown from his head and tried to put it on the statue. Nothing happened.

Back outside the hall, we took another short rest, allowing the gashes the shroom inflicted on Baldwin to stop bleeding. After a brief discussion, as to whether it was worth heading back to town (I was interested in whether any of the village folk of Westpine knew of the crown and to have a comfy bed to sleep on for the night), we started following the river upstream. After about an hour’s walk, I heard an “ooof” sound behind me, as something had careened into Melech’s chest at full pace. A clearly flustered small humanoid figure with wings picked itself and quickly stuttered “Hide!”

We needed something to prop the wagon up while the dwarf repaired it. Between us we decided a boulder and lever made from a tree would work. Melech and I set off into the woods to find one while Amafey and Beiro set about finding and cutting down a suitable tree. Melech and I quickly located a large boulder and managed to roll it back towards the wagon.

We lifted the wagon and positioned the boulder just behind the front axle. With the boulder being sufficiently large we didn’t need the tree as a lever. The dwarf set about repairing the axle and we chatted to him while he worked. We learned his named was Smordin Ironhammer and that he was on his way to Coombesgate having left Westpine earlier on.

After the axle was repaired we pushed the wagon out of the ditch. Smordin refused our offer to help reload the wagon. To reward us for our help he gave us a golden token which he explained could be exchanged for metalwork from him or a number of other traveling blacksmiths.

We parted ways with Smordin and set off again towards Westpine. We had learned from Smordin that it was about a two hour walk.

As we approached Westpine an angry cow came thundering towards us down with a shouting farmer running after. I jumped aside out of its path, as did some of the others. Amafey however took out her flute and started playing. This seemed to calm the animal and it came to halt before us. The farmer caught up and thanked us for stopping the cow. We asked about a tavern to stay at and he informed us the only tavern was the The Moody Cow just off the square.

We got to the tavern in the early afternoon. Melech and Beiro thought it was too early to drink and set off for a walk around the village and nearby woods. Amafey and I however ordered some drinking and began talking to the tavern keeper and his wife about the Fey Woods. They told us numerous stories about strange events and people entering the wood to never return. The tavern keeper insisted the stories were rubbish but nonetheless cautioned against entering. It all Sounded like a load of superstitious nonsense to me. We also learned of a path leading to a old hall in the woods. Likely a good lead to follow on the morrow.

Amafey performed that evening in return for free board at the tavern, though the rest of us had to pay. That silver from those bandits is coming in handy! The tavern itself had no rooms, so we slept in the main room after it had emptied out.

We woke early, ate breakfast and then set off down the path into the woods. We soon arrived at an old dilapidated hall with its entrance at the path’s end. We scouted around the outside of the building, It was two stories high, with windows on the second level. There was a stream flowing through a grate into what looked like a fountain at the back.

We headed back around the front and made our way into the hall. We could see a stone walkway around the height of the second floor, two doors further in that looked like they might lead up to it and the fountain at the far end. As I moved towards the stairs with the others in tow, piercing screeches erupted. Melech shouted out that this sound was possible Shrieking Fungi and that they were potential dangerous. I could see them just ahead beyond the doors, looking like deformed enormous mushrooms. To avoid going past them we made our way up the stairs onto the walkway. One end of the walkway lead to a set of doors into what was a separate room above the fountain. I likely place for the painting I thought.

We attempted to enter the room via the doors, but soon discovered the doors were blocked by the collapsed roof from above it. It occurred to us that with the roof gone we would be able to climb in from around the back. As we headed out the building a number of harmless but annoying pranks were played on us. First a mirage of a chest Beiro and I fruitlessly tried to uncover. Water was then thrown over Melech, followed by much giggling! I couldn’t for the life of me see who was doing it. Amafey said it was probably the Fey.

We continued around to the back of the hall and saw the hole left by the collapsed roof we had missed earlier. Amafey and Beiro climbed up the outside and then using a rope Amafey was lowered down inside. After a short while I heard a weird voice speak out. Maybe one of the fey?

Having asceratined that the dwarf (who we had now discovered was called Smordin “Smokey” Ironhammer) would be able to fix the axle if we were able to lift the wagon up, we generous heroes set about working out how we could do this. Beiro and I located a decently sized tree to chop down using Beiro’s handaxes. Baldwin hefted the tree down in a handful of mighty blows and then I was able to fashion it into a useable pivot with a modicum of my woodwork skills.

Melech and Beiro had delved into the woods further in search of some kind of rock to roll underneath and soon returned triumpantly with a large boulder that they were only just about able to roll. With our powers combined, lifting the wagon and propping it up with the rock was now a trivial task and Smokey went about fixing the axle. He seemed happy to chat, so I asked whether he had heard the Brightwood name before, hoping that his travelling profession and longer life might’ve meant he had heard of the name before or bumped into someone with that name more recently. Alas, he had not, but he quickly worked out why I was asking and kindly offered to pass on the message if he ever bumped into my mother.

With the axle fixed in about an hour, we hefted the wagon out of the ditch and were able to send Smokey on his way. In return for our help he gave us some sort of masterwork token. It seems as though he is one of a number of travelling forges, a bunch of highly skilled metalworkers (I would presume majoratively dwarves) that travel the lands with their forges, set up shop temporarily in different towns and sell their wares. He was on his way to Coombesgate and said he would honour us with some masterwork if we were passing back that way. Even if we were not, any of the other travelling forges would be willing to exchange some of their craft for the token. As he departed, he remembered one last thing. He showed us a mysterious metal that he kept on a chain around his neck. It was something called adamantine and, noting that we were heroic adventures, asked that if we ever came across any, to bring it to him. He would be honoured just to put his mark on anything crafted from it.

Only about an hour’s trek from leaving Smokey behind, we crested a small hill and saw the farmland and village of Westpine spread out before us. Rolling farmland converged into a handful of houses with a thickening woodland spread out behind. Just as we were enjoying the view however, we heard a commotion from down the path. A raging bull thundered towards us down the path. “Bessie!” a distraught farmer yelled from far behind. I whipped out my flute and started playing a soothing melody, meant to calm the cow and let it know we meant it no harm. As it drew closer, the rage and panic started to fade from it’s eyes and it drew to a more steady canter, pulling up just in front of us. I petted the now docile cow on the head and it mooed contentedly. The farmer finally caught up with us and breathlessly thanked us for catching the cow. We inquired as to what and where the local tavern might be an he directed us towards the The Moody Cow at the entrance of the village. We thanked him and he led the now calm Bessie away

We arrived at The Moody Cow just after lunch and I offered to buy a round of drinks. Melech and, surprisingly, Beiro reckoned it was too early to start drinking and instead went out for a walk, presumably to check the village outskirts of the woods. Baldwin, however, took me up on my offer and we sat up at the bar drinking our ale. We got talking to the barman and tried to gather some information about the Fey Woods. The innkeeper seemed uneasy about the whole idea of the woods, flicking between warding us off of entering, but declaring that all of the stories were a bunch of rubbish. When I called him out on this he stayed quiet. His heavily pregnant wife warned us of something called the “Roaming Cottage”, a cottage that appears in different places in the woods from which anyone who entered never returned, something else that her husband rubbished. He seemed to be more concerned that any mysterious happenstances, including people going missing, were being caused by some group called the “Crimson Riders”, not that he or anyone had ever seen them. We asked about routes into the woods and he mentioned an overgrown path that led from the north of the village to some old hall (probably the hall that the painting is supposed to be in).

The general consensus seemed to be that most of the villagers don’t go into the deeper woods for one reason or another, although almost entirely down to superstition and hearsay these days rather than down to any particular threat. I requested to perform for my keep again and we all had a very merry evening, with many of the local farmers staying for extra drinks. It wasn’t enough to pay for my allies’ keep, as they were only a small family run business with limited clientelle, but they were still grateful for the increased footfall that my performing had brought in.

We set off early in the morning and, following the path the innkeeper had mentioned, found ourselves quite quickly at the hall. It was in an obvious state of disrepair, with the smell of rotting wood cast out over the local area, but it was still standing proud in it’s little clearing. We gave it a once-over from the outside: a long and fairly thin building, two stories high, a small river flowing in, to what looked to be a fountain of some description. It warranted an inside look and we carefully made our way through the front and only door. Inside, the state of disrepair was all the more obvious as the rich damp smell was thick in the air. The second floor consisted of a stone walkway that ran around the edge of the room, although some of the wooden props had given way causing it to have crumbled in one corner. The room itself narrowed to small gaps with doors on either side and we could see that the fountain at the far end of the room was cracked, spilling it’s flow of water off into the walls.

As we carefully proceeded, I called out in common to check that there were no denizens that we were disturbing. In response, we were greeted by an unending ear-splitting screech. This disturbing sound was emanating from a group of fungi located about halfway along the hall. “They’re Shreiker Fungus” yelled Melech, above the din. “Harmless themselves, but we should be careful, they’re often located near Violent ones”. We paused and instead opted to check the doors on either side of the small openings and found they led up to the higher stone walkway. Once on the walkway, we could see that was some sort of separate room located above the fountain, or at least two doors leading off of the walkway. Neither door yielded to a sharp push or tug, clear that something was blocking it the other side. Wielding Beiro’s axes yet again, we got to work on the doors, the sodden wood peeling away like paper. Even so, on both sides we were met with piles of rubble. We had failed to notice that part of the roof had collapsed in our initial investigation.

Of course, with the roof collapsed, it should be accessible from outside and having spent so much of my childhood climbing up and down trees (even if it was a little scary at times), it made perfect sense to me to scale it from the outside. As we turned to go outside, Melech asked if anyone else could hear giggling. Somewhat bemused, the rest of us slowly shook our heads, but then I felt a tap on my shoulder. Turning to look, I did not see anything. Melech called out, searching for a response in one of his many languages, but did not get a response. I knew I had a language that perhaps would get a response, but decided it was worth keeping this knowledge hidden at the precise moment.

It’s worth mentioning what I’ve read about the Fey before. They are tricksters by nature, not specifically malicious, but enjoy playing pranks on unsuspecting adventurers to keep themselves entertained. Obviously being in the Fey Woods, we were likely to come across some, and I was concerned that we might need to come to some sort of arrangement to take anything away, painting included, from the woods. The fact I knew their language, Slyvan, would likely prove to be a boon, but when dealing with tricksters, it’s worth keeping such advantageous cards close to your chest.

We headed out of the building and we noticed a chest in the rubble, that no-one could remember seeing before. Seeing where this was going, I ignored it, at the very least it was something we could investigate later. Beiro and Baldwin on the other hand seemed to be determined to deal with it now. While they started scrabbling about in the rubble, Melech stepped outside the hall and with a splash was suddenly soaked by an invisible force. It was clear he was starting to get quite grumpy about the whole situation. Beiro and Baldwin also exited shortly afterwards, confirming my suspicions that the chest was a mirage.

Darting around to the back of the hall, I made short work of the outside of the building, hoping up to the roof in a handful of deft hops and steps. I turned around to find Beiro had also followed me up, clearly also confident of his climbing skills. We inspected the hole in the roof and could see inside the small room, although with no clear way back up, we decided to lower a rope in first. I lowered myself down and started exploring. The room seemed to be some kind of small alter room with a door leading off to the side. Contained within the room was a small alter with a rotting cushion on it and a suspiciously empty picture frame on the wall. A small search unearthed a little coffer with a handful of gold and trinkets. Last of all, I checked the door, which seemed to offer a staircase to the floor below, which would lead us to the other side of the shriekers. As I checked this out, I heard a voice, in Sylvan, say “Most people would’ve taken the front door”. Still wanting to keep my language skills hidden, I did not respond, but turned to find the the creature finally trying to address me.

Perched in the rafters, I saw what looked to be a small dragon seemingly the source of the voice. Chances our this is our little fey friend, as dragons don’t tend to speak Slyvan. Hopefully I can get some useful information from them, although I’m not holding my breath.

As the First Sow Celebration drew to a close my new companions and I agreed to meet at the The Fallow Sow on the morn to prepare for the mission. I headed back to the barracks to sleep, somewhat drunk from the celebration I was quickly so.

The next day I met the others at the tavern as agreed. We discussed plans for the day over breakfast. Beiro and I would shop for necessary items for travel while Amafey and Melech would do some research in the local library. I questioned what time that day we would be leaving. However it turned out Amafey had made a deal to perform tonight in return for staying at the tavern for free. Thus we would be staying an extra night in Coombesgate.

Berio and I headed to the local stores purchasing two tents, some tools and additional water skins. Berio also got some sorely needed new clothes. We then headed back to Tavern and spent the rest of morning and early afternoon quietly drinking, Berio isn’t much of a talker. Amafey and Melech arrived back and it seemed it was time for Amafey’s performance.

This time the performance was far from subpar and one the very best I had ever heard! Maybe I was wrong to question Amafey’s usefulness? Soon the tavern was rammed and the drink was flowing, with me and my companions getting free drinks all night!

The next day we set out early on the road to Westpine. With the road being well built we made good time, with Berio and I walking at the front and Amafey and Melech behind. Berio and I walked in silence while the other two chatted. I wasn’t feel that good after days of drinking and wasn’t really in the mood for talking.

Further along the road amid a copse of trees a hooded figure approached demanding all our coin to allow us to pass. Bloody bandits! Instinctively I reached for my sword but stopped as he pointed out his four companions armed with short bows among the trees. It didn’t look like the odds were in our favor.

I attempted to persuaded the bandit leader to let us through but to no avail, he was determined. Amafey then offer to perform for them in exchange for passage, probably an attempt to use some bardic magic, but the bandit refused. She then put down her instrument and rapier, took out her coin purse and approached the bandit leader. An offer of a toll was rejected and Amafey switched tack attempting to seduce the man! She managed to approach without him objecting and suddenly drew a knife stabbing him in the chest.

Then all hell broke loose as the other four bandits opened fire down upon us. I drew my bow shooting back and hitting one of the bandits among the tree. The bandit leader had drawn his sword and slashed at Amafey sending her staggering backwards. Suddenly darts of energy struck some of the bandits, presumably magic cast by Melech. I saw Berio out the corner of my eye throwing a Javelin striking another.

I further volley of arrows was fired from the trees, with Berio and I firing back. Two of the bandits were hit and fell. During the exchange however Melech had also been hit and crumpling to the ground with an arrow in the side.

The other two bandit archers, having seen their companions fall, turned and fled.

I then heard flute music and felt a weird sensation, presumable Amafey had dealt with the bandit leader and was performing some kind of magic. Berio throw a Javelin after one of the fleeing men striking him in the leg, however he did not fall and we let them go.

Amafey rushed over to aid Melech while me and Berio dispatched of the fallen bandits, searching them for anything useful. We found nothing much, other than a bit of coin. So we carried Melech out of the trees into a clearing and rested while we waited for him to come around.

We continued along the road without further trouble stopping to camp when night fell. We headed out again in the morning. The day remained uneventful until around midday when we came across a dwarven blacksmith with his wagon stuck in the ditch. He requested our help in unloading the wagon and Amafey quickly offered up out assistance. Berio and I set about helping with the heavier items.

Once the wagon was empty we attempted to pull it out of the ditch, but alas without success. The dwarf informed us one of the axles was broken and asked we help lift and support the wagon so he could fix it.

I am beginning to wonder at the point if we need to leave him and press on to Westpine before we have to spend another night on the road…

Following the epic quest we have now been tasked with, our newly formed group, comprised of myself, Beiro, Melech and a local guard who went by the name of Baldwin agreed to reconvene in The Fallow Sow the following morning. The idea was that we would spend some time shopping for any new equipment, maybe gather some other information and then set out mid-afternoon. However, I’d forgotten the deal I’d made with the innkeeper, that I was to play the following day as well in order to earn my keep for the night. Having seen I had forgotten this, the innkeeper became concerned that I would skip out on him, so I left my flute as collateral for the night.

In the morning, we met in the bar for breakfast and made our plans. Melech and I were to head to the Coombesgate library, while Beiro and Baldwin were to shop for some new supplies. In the library, it took little time between Melech and myself to locate a couple of books about the Fey Woods. Through combinations of pieces of folk tales, we were able to find reference to an alliance brokered between the fey and the humans, seemingly with reference to the Forest Queen on both sides. I also had a quick look into Baron Ramsgate III‘s family history and past dealings. There didn’t seem to be much in terms of notable dealings, but his family history goes right back to the early barons in the time of Ustia, which would go towards explaining why he’s after this painting.

Melech and I returned to the tavern in the early afternoon and met up with Baldwin and Berio. They’d acquired a couple of tents, an extra waterskin and some new clothes for Beiro (It’s about time!). I had a drink for some Dutch courage, retrieved my flute from behind the bar and started up my evening performance. I played things a little safer, sticking to the stuff I knew, but never has it gone down quite so well! People were enraptured and the tavern kept filling and filling throughout the evening. I switched things up as time went on, telling another fey story I had read while in Kennyrlatin, then shifting back to my ukulele for the rest of the evening. The evening’s performance netted me a fair amount in tips and had me and my teammates well supplied with drink. The barkeep extended his utmost gratitude at the end of the night and said I was more than welcome to come back anytime.

The following morning, we set out bright and early on our way to Westpine. The road was well built and it was an easy walk. Melech and I chatted about magic, with him explaining that he’s specifically studying the “evocation” field of magic. He then asked for the tale of how Beiro and I came to be travelling together, which I delivered with my usual flair. As we proceeded through a copse of trees however, a hooded figure approached us, demanding our coin in exchange for allowing us through. To further persuade us, four of his compatriots appeared from the undergrowth, with arrows trained on our group. I inquired what the toll was, but he said it was however much we had on us, determined to leave our pockets empty.

I mentioned my performance of the previous night, which had the whole town talking and whether instead he would like to hear me play, but he was clearly unwilling to take any chances about the magic of music unwilling to let me play anything. I put down my uke and rapier, took my coin purse and proceeded to the front of the group, out of ideas that would put us at any sort of advantage in this situation. As I stepped forwards though, I noticed a look in his eye, not directed at the coin that he had said he wanted so much, but towards me. In a moment of desperation, I tried something that is not normally in my nature and attempted to seduce him, aware that many humans found elves, or at least someone with elven features, beautiful. All the time I have spent performing has clearly paid off and, despite lacking confidence in what I was doing, he was entranced by the suggestion and I was able to approach him. I made the few steps towards him, uttering other sweet nothings and placed my hand on his should. I then proceeded to seductively run my hand down the side of my leg, until it hit the cool metal in my boot, at which point I pulled out my dagger and stabbed him in the chest.

Having not made my intentions clear to the group, chaos then broke loose. I heard arrows let loose behind me (although with a slight delay as they figured out what was happening) and the leader was able to shove me back, keeping me further at bay with a slice of his longsword, cutting across my chest. As I recoiled, I saw a bolt of energy hit him in the side of the head, presumably a spell from Melech and I took the opportunity from this further loss of concentration to lunge in again, stabbing him in the heart. Clear that he wasn’t getting back up again, I turned, whipping the flute out of my belt and started to support Baldwin, clearly a capable fighter in these conditions. In the brief moments I’d been dealing with the leader though, two of the other archers were down and the others fleeing.

We were not without casualties ourselves, however, Melech was down, with an arrow embedded in his side. Knowing that he had probably just saved my life, I was determined to not let him die and, even with my limited knowledge in this area, was able to stabilise him quickly. After quickly checking over the bodies, we quickly brought him out of the copse into the open fields again, determined to not be surprised again. With a short rest, we were all fit enough to continue and fortunately did not encounter any more trouble through the rest of the day

An uneventful night passed and we set out once again, hoping to arrive at Westpine by nightfall. At around midday, another figure, albeit a much shorted one this time, appeared in the distance. A dwarf was hurrying about at the side of the road, unloading his wagon which had gotten stuck in the ditch. He requested our help, first asserting that we weren’t bandits, to continue to offload the wagon so we would be able to pull it out of its predicament. Delegating the heavier stuff to the stronger members of the party, I helped out where I could until we had cleared the wagon. A combined effort to pull the wagon out was met with failure, even though it was now empty. The dwarf examined the underside and noted the axle was broken and that we’d need to fix it before it was going anywhere. If only we could find some way to keep the wagon lifted up, he might be able to use his blacksmithing skills to fix it…

After a few days staying at the barrack in Coombesgate I received an invite from the Barron to his feast celebrating the First Sow. I stayed around in Coombesgate awaiting it, mainly spent drinking and gambling in the taverns. When the time came I made my way over to feast, presented my invite and was shown to my seat.

I was sat next to the captain of the guard, Harvey Springman. We conversed about the new Steward and his soldiers up at Norcragden. The food was plentiful and so was the drink so I soon became rather tipsy. Which was probably for the best as the entertainment was somewhat subpar.

After the meal the Barron approached me and asked for my help in retrieving a painting depicting Uster from a manor house on the outskirts of the fey woods. The Barron then introduced me to a tiefling by the name of Melech, some kind of university wizard who would be able to help me with the task.

Somewhat rudely, a ragged looking Elf then comes over and interrupted us, clearly having been eavesdropping on the conversation. Then would you believe, another Elf, one of the entertainers from before appears. One way or another both Elves also end up being recruited by the Barron. I did question their usefulness but to no avail.

After weeks of travel from Larrillian, briefly stopping in Dormarsh, Beiro and I finally reached the town of Coombesgate. We had been told by the locals of Dormarsh that the Baron was to be holding a feast and would be looking for entertainment, so this seemed like a good opportunity to start making a name for myself in these parts.

Upon arriving at Coombesgate, we found a guard who was helping to find last minute entertainment for the festival. I decided to perform one of my trusty favourite songs and made perhaps the best performance of my life. Clearly impressed, the guard gave me an invite for the feast, to be held that evening.

Beiro and I made our way to the nearest tavern, the Fallow Sow, in order to set up for . On the way, a little girl approached us, selling sweet pastries for the festival, made by her mother. She seemed innocent enough and they were fairly priced, so both Beiro and I had one each. They were pretty tasty, but nothing to write home about. We proceeded to the tavern and I bought us a round, giving me the opportunity to chat with the barkeep. I wanted to try and write a song about the Baron for his feast, so wanted to gather some information, although all the barkeep was able to tell us was that the baron was bald and had a mustache. Well, I suppose that was something to work with. I made some notes while finishing the beer and Beiro bought us the next round.

While working on my notes, I heard someone come into the tavern and a hush fall over the room. Turning around, I saw what I presumed must be a tiefling, stopped in the doorway. I had never seen one before, but having read about them in the library, this guy seemed to fit the bill. He made his way over to the bar and the noise level resumed. He requested some wine from the barkeep and addressed Beiro and myself in elvish, which both surprised and impressed me. We spoke briefly and it seems as though he’s a scholar from a university in Eldwamman and had been invited to the feast by the Baron as well. We bid each other good day and he retreated to a table elsewhere in the tavern.

Having come up with some inspiration for the song, including the lines “We are gathered here for the feast of sow, the time has come for our hunger to go”, I asked the barkeep about the opportunity to practice in the tavern in exchange for keep for the night. He obliged and I made a shaky but adequate performance of the new song. The barkeep just seemed happy it was a different song from the one the local bard always plays, so gave Beiro and I a room for the night.

We made our way to the feast and, after having persuaded the doormen that Beiro was needed to accompany me, we took some time to mingle with the crowd. The food at the feast itself was exquisite, I’ve not had food this good since leaving Kennrylatin, although it was a little richer than what I had at home. I was seated near the baron and had a lot of people asking for stories of Larillian. From my little pocket of the woods, I didn’t really feel like I had any great stories and certainly know little of the political situation at the moment, but they seemed sated by my retellings of old Uster legends and a couple of fey stories I remember reading back in the great library.

At last it was time for my performance. People had started to mingle, so I was to be more background music, but I was determined I could make an impact with a great performance. However, the butterflies in my stomach, weighted a bit more heavily than normal after the feast, stopped me from performing at my best. It wasn’t terrible, people were too drunk to care that I missed a note or two, but I know I didn’t have the kind of impact I was hoping for, nobody’s going to remember me tomorrow.

My set finished and somewhat crestfallen, I decided to seek out Beiro to see what he had gotten up to. I found him conversing with the Baron and the tiefling from earlier, whose name I now got was Melech. It turns out he baron is after a painting depicting Uster and an elf hero from the same time period, apparently residing in a manor house on the outskirts of the fey woods. This kind of adventure sounds right up my street, so I volunteered the both of us to join the party that was to retrieve it.

Monsters in the Mist

Dear Father and Mother,
I hope this letter reaches you well.

Life has been exciting of late for Parse and I. I’ve finally managed to gather the necessary ingredients to cast the summon familiar spell Professor Nisivar taught me. Vetrix has granted me an owl bearing her divinity, that I’ve chosen to name Moltres. He’s an inquisitive fellow, and has already proved his value. The rest of my friends are well, Mallark and Lira seem to have cheered up as we’ve spent more time away from Oldden. They always seem far more at home in the wilderness.

After having acquired the honey for Linus, the jolly general goods merchant of Oldden, he told us he could get us in touch with more people who’d be interested in our work. One of the local human nobles, the Hemlock clan, is having an elaborate birthday party and everyone of import is said to be attending. It seems to be the sort of event we should be supplying to if we want to trade further with Human establishments. Linus had an invite, and here is why my knowledge of human royalty lets me down, apparently his invite was somehow dependent on the present he had bought. A bizarre custom if you ask me. Unfortunately for Linus, and us, it seems that the goods never reached Linus. If we wanted to go to this party, we will have to track them down. The best lead he could give us was that they were meant to be arriving at a nearby fishing village by boat, before getting moved to Oldden by caravan.

We chose to go to Roundwatch village first, hoping to meet his courier’s en route. If it came to the worst we would at least be able to find out if the goods ever arrived at the village. While staying overnight at a shelter maintained by the local warden we encountered a family travelling well past dark. They told us that they’d been forced to flee their home and had come to the warden to get help. As we couldn’t get hold of the warden, we offered to check it out as we were heading there anyway. We were all on edge as while the Mother and Father had been vague about the dangers they’d left behind, the children were insistent that they’d seen monsters. It seemed likely that a rotten fate had befallen the men we were meant to meet.

It was after talking to the family that it dawned on us that Linus was likely smuggling these goods in, for Roundwatch was by no means a trade port. Even calling such a small settlement a village is akin to describing an ember as a flame. I determined that when we resolved whatever had befallen Linus’s friends I would need to talk to my own to determine what actions we should take. I was upset to learn that Linus does not respect the laws of his land and wanted to bring up the option of turning over the goods, if found, to the proper authority instead of returning them to Linus.

After the best part of a day travelling we arrived at Roundwatch’s outskirts. The village was still smoldering from the fires the night before, and there were clear signs of struggling. We also spotted the watchtower the village was named after in the distance. I tasked Moltres with scouting the tower while we investigated the village proper. Whatever had attacked the village had left, and all signs indicated that they’d gone to the tower. Moltres confirmed this was likely as it had spotted shadows walking past windows but hadn’t managed to identify what occupied the tower.

The tower turned out to have several basement levels as well as the expected upper levels. We decided to investigate the lower floors first, assuming that they’d be faster to search. As it turns out this wasn’t an accurate assumption. In our exploration we found a large variety of loot, including a large stash of notes guaranteed by a dwarven noble. I’ve included one with this letter, I was wondering if our archivist would happen to know more about the noble named on them?

Eventually we encountered a number of fish like men performing a rite over a captured human. Seeing that the human was in peril we moved quickly to defeat the fishmen and rescue him. As it happened, the human in question was one of the contacts we’d been told about by Linus.

The hive and the halberd

Our search for these abnormally large insects began with checking the field where it supposedly attacked the local cattle. On inspection, it seemed the locals were right. However, it seemed that the cause of the attack was actually the cattles fault, it seemingly wandered into the woods and in someway spooked the bee.

We then took the forest, hoping to find some sign of their nest. I’ve not seen so many trees so closely packed together, the tree covering so thick it was almost like being back at Firepeak! Lira again proved her impressive skills as a Ranger, despite the density of the trees and the unchanging surroundings not once was she lost. It seems she has a connection with these woods as deep as our peoples connection with the stone.

To our horror, in our search for the hive we first came across a very different beast. A large bear leapt from the brush and assaulted us! It so happened that I was the closest to the enraged creature, and it soon had the best of me. Parse as always had my back, and got me back onto my feet while the rest of our party fended off the bear.

Some time later we came across our first alive giant bee. Despite our closeness to it, the creature did not seem at all hostile to us. We figured that if we followed it for long enough eventually it would lead us back to its hive. It took a long time, but eventually we were brought to a large mound that the bees seemed to be living within. We took sometime to inspect the mound from the outside, but it soon became clear we were going to make little progress without attempting to scout out the inside.

Parse, ever impatient to indecisiveness, quickly took the lead and the brunt of the bees defence of their home. You could see the years of his training with the honour guard in every movement, and the poor critters could hardly land a hit. Before too long we’d killed or subdued the entire nest.

The hive was a curious place, while you could see the bees had built some of it, most of the internal structure and construction appeared to be by one of the humanoid races. A quick search revealed a decorated tomb in memorial to a long forgotten elven hero. I was unaware the fey folk revered any of their dead in such a manner, it was almost cultured! The hero had been left with his famed halberd, a beautiful magical construction that must have been the most finely crafted weapon outside of the dwarven world for many a century. It had however been made part of an evil trap, removing the halberd caused undead warriors to be released from columns to defend the heros resting place.

They gave us a good fight, clearly they’d been skilled warriors in their previous life, but ultimately they were no match for us. Then we were left with the question of what do with the halberd. As part of this tomb, I felt it only right to leave it with them. The ancestors must be honoured, and while the other races do not seem to share our belief on this I was not about to tarnish one of the few exceptions. Most of my friends however felt that our need for the fine weapon was greater. Before the discovery of the undead guards Parse had sided with me, but he felt strongly that the use of the vile arts to protect his place of rest marked him as evil and no longer deserving of the respect we pay to our dead. In the end I had to concede, for I was unable to change the hearts of my compatriots.

The last thing left to do before heading back was to collect the honey, the basis of our quest had been not been entirely forgotten even with the discovery of the tomb! Quickly we loaded up our barrels, and our water skins, with the substance. Only pausing briefly to bury some poor soul that had wandered in before us and had fallen to the giant bees.

Once we’d loaded up, Lira quickly lead us back to Oldden. Linus was as good as his word and payed us in full for our service, even throwing in the cost of our stay at the inn!

That’s all from Parse and I as of this writing. How has life been in the peaks? Has Ferrodin yet mastered the distillery, last I heard he’d managed to prepare a whisky at double strength! I’m sure Fargrim Dankil was fond of that particular batch, but I fear it may not be to everyones taste. If a human got a hold of it he’d join his ancestors before he’d had his first glass.

I heard our sister Diesa was to be wed to one of the Hollowridge clan? Wish her the best from me, and that you did at least pick one of the hairier sons as a suitor for her sake.

May the ancestors watch over you, and the ale stay pleasantly warm
Thoradin & Parse

PS: Enclosed you should find 2 waterskins worth of that fine honey we harvested. Some humans use it for preparing their beer, we thought you may find it interesting to try mixing it with our family ale. Also enclosed is a map of the area around Oldden and the hive if we should need to procure a larger supply of the honey.

The Hunt for Giant Bee Honey

My brother Parsnip and I are well, we’re still travelling with our adventuring party. As always, Carric and I get in the way of each other trying to sell our wares and true to his name Despair has yet to lighten up.

We recently escorted a merchant to a small town named Oldden, a quaint little human settlement just to the east of our home. They seem to mostly produce dairy, although they do have a local craft beer. Not bad for a small town like this but it’s a little bit too heavy on the hops.

Anyway, our client was kind of enough to tell us that Oldden’s general merchant, a boisterous fellow by the name of Linus, had plenty of work for adventurers such as us. Indeed, we talked to Linus and he told us that the town had a nearby giant bee infestation. Rather than just merely clear out the infestation, he instead asked us to bring him back the honey of these bees. Apparently it’s quite the delicacy! So much so that he’s willing to pay our group 60gp to fetch it for him. It would hardly dent our family’s coffers of course, but it’s the most money I’ve seen since I started this adventurers life.